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Objective: The study seeks to determine the levels of work stress in the employees of a service company, describing the causes and their financial impact.   Theoretical Framework: The concepts of work stress defined as a general state of tension that triggers different emotional, cognitive, physiological and behavioral reactions are addressed, as well as some causing factors such as: Physical Environment, Job Demand, Knowing the tasks and interpersonal relationships.   Method: The study has a mixed approach, where qualitative categories were given quantitative management of the data, to find numerical evidence and be able to explain in more detail the presence of the event. The ILO-WHO Work Stress scale was used as an instrument, which was applied to 33 employees of a Contact Center company in the city of Manizales.   Results and Discussion: The results obtained revealed that work stress is below the limit of the intermediate stress range (81.09 / 90.02) and that due to Absenteeism and Turnover, the company has had costs of $43,995,586 COP according to approximate calculations.   Research Implications: The evidence from the study showed information that allows companies in the service sector to generate strategies for stress management and contribute to reducing costs due to absenteeism and turnover, the above could be used in other sectors or companies in the region.   Originality/Value: The value lies in contributing to the development of the state of the art on the subject and as a reference for future studies since the state of the art shows little research in Contact Center companies in Latin America, likewise for companies generating well-being strategies and the management of the stress.

Over the past few years, virtual assistant solutions used in Contact Center systems are gaining popularity. One of the main tasks of the virtual assistant is to recognize the intentions of the customer. It is important to note that quite often the actual intention expressed in a conversation is also directly influenced by the emotions that accompany that conversation. Unfortunately, scientific literature has not identified what specific types of emotions in Contact Center applications are relevant to the activities they perform. Therefore, the main objective of this work was to develop an Emotion Classification for Machine Detection of Affect-Tinged Conversational Contents dedicated directly to the Contact Center industry. In the conducted study, Contact Center voice and text channels were considered, taking into account the following families of emotions: anger, fear, happiness, sadness vs. affective neutrality of the statements. The obtained results confirmed the usefulness of the proposed classification—for the voice channel, the highest efficiency was obtained using the Convolutional Neural Network (accuracy, 67.5%; precision, 80.3; F1-Score, 74.5%), while for the text channel, the Support Vector Machine algorithm proved to be the most efficient (accuracy, 65.9%; precision, 58.5; F1-Score, 61.7%).

Objective: The objective of this study was to determine if and to what extent the Big Five personality factors of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, or neuroticism individually moderate the relationship between the level of education and level of job satisfaction among contact center employees.   Theoretical Framework: In this topic, the main concepts and theories that underpin the research are presented. Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory and John’s BFI stand out, providing a solid basis for understanding the context of the investigation.   Method: The methodology adopted for this research comprises a quantitative correlational approach. Participants include U.S. contact center employees. Data collection was carried out through questionnaires distributed to contact center employees.   Results and Discussion: The results obtained revealed that the individual moderators of the BFI personality traits do not significantly impact the relationship between the level of education completed and the level of job satisfaction for U.S. contact center employees. In the discussion section, these results are contextualized in light of Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory, highlighting that education completion cannot be utilized as a motivator factor in this context even with the addition of the individual personality traits as moderators. Possible discrepancies and limitations of the study are also considered in this section.   Research Implications: The practical and theoretical implications of this research are discussed, providing insights into how the results can be applied or influence practices in the field of business and education. These implications could encompass human resources, management, and post-high-school education.   Originality/Value: This study contributes to the literature by offering a practical contribution to contact center professionals and educational institutions. The relevance and value of this research are evidenced by its potential to impact contact center hiring processes and assessing the value of post-high-school education for contact center employees.

Today, in many areas of technology, we can come across applications of various artificial intelligence methods. They usually involve models trained on some specific pool of learning data. Sometimes, however, the data analyzed by these solutions can change its nature over time. This usually results in a decrease in classification efficiency. In such a case, the use of techniques to retrain the originally trained reference models should be considered. One of the industries where the nature of data changes quite dynamically over time is the broadly defined call/contact center systems. An example of a module that is often found in this type of system and that, due to frequently changing marketing campaigns, requires the use of learning techniques is the automatic classification of text data. The paper describes the process of retraining the original reference models used in a multi-label text message classification method dedicated directly to call/contact center systems applications. In order to carry out the retraining process, Polish-language data from the actual archives of a large commercial contact center system and English-language data extracted from a publicly available database were used. The study was conducted for models based on artificial neural networks and bidirectional encoder representations from transformer type models. In addition, two different retraining strategies were studied, the results of which were compared with data obtained from the operation of reference models. As a result of the research work, an improvement of up to 5% in classification efficiency, as described by the metric Emotica was obtained, which means that proper integration of the retraining process brings tangible benefits to the solution tested in the article. Thus, it can also benefit the solutions used in business.

Objective: The objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between the level of education completed after high school graduation and the level of job satisfaction among U.S. contact center employees.   Theoretical Framework: In this topic, the main concepts and theories that underpin the research are presented. Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory stands out, providing a solid basis for understanding the context of the investigation.   Method: The methodology adopted for this research comprises a quantitative correlational approach. Participants include U.S. contact center employees. Data collection was carried out through questionnaires distributed to contact center employees.   Results and Discussion: The results obtained revealed that the level of education completed after high school graduation does not significantly impact the level of job satisfaction for U.S. contact center employees. In the discussion section, these results are contextualized in light of Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory, highlighting that education completion cannot be utilized as a motivator factor in this context. Possible discrepancies and limitations of the study are also considered in this section.   Research Implications: The practical and theoretical implications of this research are discussed, providing insights into how the results can be applied or influence practices in the field of business and education. These implications could encompass human resources, management, and post-high-school education.   Originality/Value: This study contributes to the literature by offering a practical contribution to contact center professionals and educational institutions. The relevance and value of this research are evidenced by its potential to impact contact center hiring processes and assessing the value of post-high-school education for contact center employees.

Attrition is the biggest pain point in the contact-center industry across nations. Hence, it is important to study how to retain contact center employees. This study aimed to identify the key factors influencing long-term retention among contact center employees in Malaysia. The Delphi method was implemented using purposive sampling. A total of 24 experts were selected from the contact center industry, who had been working in the field for more than five years in managerial positions. A two-round Delphi method was conducted where, in the first round, experts were requested to list the factors contributing to long-term retention among contact center employees in Malaysia. Thematic analysis was employed in the first round to identify the dimensions by grouping themes. In the second round, experts were requested to rank the dimensions from the most important to the least important. Based on the findings, the most important factors identified were supportive management, followed by work-life balance, compensation and benefits, working environment, career development, reward and recognition, training and development, and health support. Recommendation was provided to the contact center operation in Malaysia based on this finding on the initiative that can be worked on to retain the contact center employee in Malaysia.

Evaluation of contact forces-centers of the tibiofemoral joint in gait has crucial biomechanical and pathological consequences. It involves however difficulties and limitations in in vitro cadaver and in vivo imaging studies. The goal is to estimate total contact forces (CF) and location of contact centers (CC) on the medial and lateral plateaus using results computed by a validated finite element model simulating the stance phase of gait for normal as well as osteoarthritis, varus-valgus and posterior tibial slope altered subjects. Using foregoing contact results, six methods commonly used in the literature are also applied to estimate and compare locations of CC at 6 periods of stance phase (0%, 5%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%). TF joint contact forces are greater on the lateral plateau very early in stance and on the medial plateau thereafter during 25–100% stance periods. Large excursions in the location of CC (>17mm), especially on the medial plateau in the mediolateral direction, are computed. Various reported models estimate quite different CCs with much greater variations (~15mm) in the mediolateral direction on both plateaus. Compared to our accurately computed CCs taken as the gold standard, the centroid of contact area algorithm yielded least differences (except in the mediolateral direction on the medial plateau at ~5mm) whereas the contact point and weighted center of proximity algorithms resulted overall in greatest differences. Large movements in the location of CC should be considered when attempting to estimate TF compartmental contact forces in gait.

Eden najnovejših trendov današnjega časa pri spletnem nakupovanju, maloprodaji in kontaktnih centrih je večkanalni način. To je strategija, ki zagotavlja brezhibno in integrirano uporabniško izkušnjo v vseh razpoložljivih komunikacijskih kanalih. Uporablja se v kontaktnih centrih za izboljšanje njihovih storitev za stranke s povečanjem njihove učinkovitosti in optimizacijo delovanja njihovega sistema. Prispevek predstavlja infrastrukturo večkanalne storitve, ki omogoča preprosto integracijo sporočilnih kanalov. Storitev podpira različne avtentikatorje za prijavo, da se zagotovi njena uporabnost za različne namene. Trenutna izvedba prijavnega avtentifikatorja uporablja Asterisk PBX, ki omogoča implementacijo sistema kontaktnega centra. Večkanalna storitev prek povezave TCP zagotavlja API za izmenjavo sporočil med identificiranimi uporabniki storitve in odjemalci prek kanalov za sporočanje.

Telephone call centers are an integral part of many businesses, and their economic role is significant and growing. They are also fascinating sociotechnical systems in which the behavior of customers and employees is closely intertwined with physical performance measures. In these environments traditional operational models are of great value—and at the same time fundamentally limited—in their ability to characterize system performance. We review the state of research on telephone call centers. We begin with a tutorial on how call centers function and proceed to survey academic research devoted to the management of their operations. We then outline important problems that have not been addressed and identify promising directions for future research.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyze the moderating role of affective commitment in the relationship between work-personal life conflict (WPLC) and burnout in the contact center environment.Design/methodology/approachData were obtained through the participation of a sample of Portuguese employees (n=2,055) of a large company in the contact center sector. Data were analyzed using the Process tool.FindingsThe results support the existence of a positive relationship between both dimensions of WPLC (i.e. time and strain) and burnout (i.e. exhaustion and cynicism). Moreover, the study confirms that the affective commitment moderates the relationship between both dimensions of WPLC and cynicism, buffering these relationships.Research limitations/implicationsThe cross-sectional design and the reliance on self-report measures are the main limitations of this study, although no causality was claimed and method biases were controlled.Practical implicationsContact center managers should develop human resources practices that aid employees to conciliate work and life. Furthermore, these work-life balance practices should be used together with high involvement human resources practices that promote employees’ affective commitment.Originality/valueThis study provides evidence for the need to reconceptualize the traditional work-family conflict, stressing the importance of considering the interference between domains of life, especially in sectors that tend to have young employees.