“How may I help you?”: A study on the predictors of job performance among call

center agents

Bautista, VivienCarballo, JoanaNaval, AngelicaOrtega, Norise

Participants and Setting:

• Based on the proposal:

Pre-test

Participants will be 32 call center agents working on an eight hour

shift from one company within Metro Manila.

Letter of request will be sent to the company regarding the data gathering.

Data gathering will be conducted within the premises of the company.

Scale administration will depend on the agreement between the

the researchers and the company.

Options:

a. We will be the ones to administer the test.

b. Survey kit will be given to the HR Department

and we will let them distribute it among the participants.

Separate survey kits will be provided to the participants and to their

team leaders. ( 1:1 correspondence).

Participants and Setting:

• Based on the proposal:

Actual Procedure

Participants will be 300 call center agents working on an eight hour

shift from various companies within Metro Manila.

Letter of request will be sent to the company regarding the data gathering.

Data gathering will be conducted within the premises of the company.

Scale administration will depend on the agreement between the

the researchers and the company.

Options:

a. We will be the ones to administer the test.

b. Survey kit will be given to the HR Department

and we will let them distribute it among the participants.

Separate survey kits will be provided to the participants and to their

team leaders. ( 1:1 correspondence).

Participants and Setting:

• Current Situation:

Submitted proposal to around 30 companies.

- Denied

- Concerned about confidentiality

- No response

No pre-test yet.

On the process of revising the procedure.

Revisions:

• Change of sampling method from convenience sampling to Exponential Non-Discriminative Snowball Sampling/Quota Sampling

• Change of scale from Job Performance Measurement Scale which is supposed to be filled up by the supervisor to Role-Based Performance Scale which is a self-evaluation measure.

• Change in the Data Gathering procedure:

A. Online Survey

- Google Survey will be generated.

B. Face-to-Face

- Meet-up with the call center agents.

C. Survey Kits

- Survey kits which includes the scales will be distributed and

collected again.

ReflectionIt takes some time before companies respond to our requests or our proposal and we

cannot demand a lot from them.

We should have considered asking our contacts from different call center companies if they do allow undergraduates to conduct data gathering in their premises.

We should not just rely on the response of the HR officers to whom we have sent the letter of request for they might not prioritize it, a backup plan is always needed if ever the original plan would not work well.

The change in one of our scales and the procedure is our plan of action to solve the problems that we encountered in our study. We should not have waited for so long and should have decided earlier about the necessary revisions that we need to make.

We need to maximize our time so that we can report and submit the results as soon as possible.

Timeline

DATE PLAN OF ACTION

August 2 Presentation of replacement scale for approval, Consultation

August 3 Preparation of pretest materials

August 4 Preparation of pretest materials

August 5 Pretest

August 6 Pretest, Encoding of data gathered

August 7 Encoding of data gathered

August 8 Data Analysis

August 9 Consultation regarding Data Analysis

August 10 Revisions based on pretest results

Timeline

DATE PLAN OF ACTION

August 11 Consultation regarding the revised procedure, presentation of actual data gathering materials for approval

August 12-August 26

Actual data gathering and encoding of data gathered

August 27-28 Data Analysis

August 29-30 Results writing

August 31 Submission of Results