Market orientation of frontline employees and its impact on service quality and productivity within the South African contact centre industry
The study of market orientation has received considerable attention in the marketing literature, and remains well debated. Despite numerous conceptualisations and approaches to understand the relationship between market orientation, service quality and productivity across diverse industries, few studies have considered it at individual level and within the South African contact centre industry. This study employs self reported data from frontline employees and their Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to empirically consider the notion that market orientation, service quality and productivity are related. A survey was used to collect data from 218 respondents and the hypothesised model was tested using Partial Least Squares (PLS) path analysis and Pearson correlation analyses. The results confirm significant and positive relationships between a number of market orientation components and those of service quality. Interestingly, a number of components of market orientation and service quality were found to be significantly correlated with only one of the productivity indicators - Average Handling Time. Counter to expectation, the components of service quality were not found to be negatively correlated with productivity. This finding contradicts the literature that argues that service quality and productivity are often in conflict, and highlights that the methods often employed to measure productivity in certain South African contact centres, do not correspond to service quality in the way that is commonly assumed.
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