Customer Representatives’ Competence of Call Center Employees: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

The fundamental purpose of this exploratory study is to understand and analyze the leadership styles of customer representatives in call centers of online travel agencies (OTAs) through content analysis. The sample consists of 895 customer responses about the services of these online agencies. The theoretical background of the study focuses on the servant leadership styles of customer representatives to see how they can handle tough situations with the customers and how the customers respond to the level of services. The findings reveal valuable hints and important perspectives of customers for the leadership styles of customer representatives. The emphasized points are the reservation problems, lack of problemsolving, delivery of wrong information to the customers, focus on sales rather than customer satisfaction, low level of institutionalism perspective of customer representatives, and lack of interest after the sales. The study enlightens the leadership styles of customer representatives in call centers of online agencies for the use of researchers and practitioners.