Assessing the Impact of Perceived Powerfulness on the Performance of Call Centre Customer Service Representatives

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to build upon and develop existing theory on power, and perceived power, and to examine how, if at all, those perceptions of power modify an individual’s performance. This thesis uses call centre staff as the vehicle with which to study these performance modifications. Whilst the word “power” is ubiquitous, it is often misunderstood, or even misrepresented. This research provides an understanding of power and explains how feelings of powerfulness have modified behaviour under laboratory conditions. It then investigates how power can be manipulated and what the effects of such manipulations can be in the context of customer service representatives in a busy working call centre.

The thesis presents the findings form two pilot studies and a main study. The pilot studies were used to inform the design and implementation of the main study. The main study was conducted over 10 days, providing over 1000 data points. Unlike previous research in this area, this thesis is based on live working environments using real employees as participants. All participants are employed full time by Conneqt—a contact centre based in Hyderabad, India—the research partner that owns the call centre, and provided access to staff. Study participants were identified using a combination of stratified, convenience, and random sampling. One hundred participants were randomly divided into two groups, one being the Control Group, and the other being the Intervention Group. The Control Group was given very little information, but was asked to complete a short survey every day for the next 10 days. The survey included questions where participants self-reported on feelings of powerfulness, as well as questions designed to measure their latent feelings of power.

The Intervention Group was shown a brief video each day instructing them to adopt an expansive body pose, whist remembering a specific occasion on which they had felt powerful and in control. While they were doing this, specially curated music was playing in the background. They were also shown images with examples of the types of expansive body poses they could adopt. The exercise lasted approximately five minutes, at the end of which they were asked to complete the same survey as the Control Group.

The data collected from both groups over 10 working days was analysed using SPSS descriptive statistical analysis. The data shows that while there was little difference between the two groups in terms of self-reported feelings of powerfulness, the intervention group experienced greater latent feelings of power than the control group. This data was then compared to performance data provided by the research partner—call centre management. This data shows that the intervention group performed better than the control group in key performance metrics.

The thesis contributes to an already extensive body of knowledge, and takes it in a fresh and relevant direction. It makes a number of significant contributions to knowledge, including comparing for the first time a number of power manipulations used in previous research. Notably, it is the first study to examine how changes in feelings of powerfulness can impact performance of everyday working people, rather than student participants, and first study to relate changes in feelings of powerfulness to business performance.

The conclusion of the study is that whilst the Intervention Group did not report a difference in feelings of powerfulness compared to the Control Group, there was a marked difference in unconscious feelings of powerfulness. There was no marked difference in the Net Promoter Scores achieved by the Intervention Group. However, the Intervention Group did experience improved results compared to the Control Group in Average Handling Time of calls. The Intervention Group saw a marked reduction in AHT from 350.64 prior to the intervention, to 309.52 after the
intervention, which was also 24 seconds shorter than the AHT of the Control Group. The independent means test calculated a p value of .027, which means that these results are significant at ⍺ = .01

The combination of increased unconscious feelings of powerfulness, and the significant positive difference in Average Handling Time, leads to the conclusion that the intervention had a positive impact on feelings of powerfulness, and that this had a positive impact on business performance.

Date of Award	Jul 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Northampton
Supervisor	Amin Hosseinian Far (Director of Studies), Zubin Sethna (Supervisor) & Jonathan Wilson (Supervisor)