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Using customer contact centres as relationship marketing instruments

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Abstract

This article investigates whether, to what extent and how customer contact centres influence customer–firm relationships through customer contact centre quality. The proposed model compiles direct and indirect effects of this form of quality on focal relationship marketing constructs, including customer satisfaction, trust, affective commitment and customer loyalty. A survey of 1,589 customers of three service firms in different industries provides a test of the model. The results indicate that customer contact centre quality is a relational instrument with a positive, direct influence on relationship quality. Its substantial positive effect on customer loyalty is indirect, mediated by relationship quality.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Management Research, Radboud University Nijmegen, Owner of MindThem, Muurdijk 3, 6852 HH, Huissen, The Netherlands

    Zanna van der Aa

  2. Department of Marketing and Market Research, Institute for Management Research, Radboud University Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9108, 6500 HK, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Josée Bloemer & Jörg Henseler

Authors
  1. Zanna van der Aa
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  2. Josée Bloemer
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  3. Jörg Henseler
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Josée Bloemer.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 6.

Table 6 Scale items used for the measures
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van der Aa, Z., Bloemer, J. & Henseler, J. Using customer contact centres as relationship marketing instruments. Serv Bus 9, 185–208 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11628-013-0223-9

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