Business Commons^™

Exploring The Zone Of Tolerance For Internal Customers In It-Enabled Call Centers, J.J. Po-An Hsieh, Piyush Sharma, Arun Rai, A. Parasuraman

Computer Information Systems Faculty Publications

Today, call center employees’ service encounters with external customers are extensively supported with modern information technology (IT). However, prior research on service quality and zone of tolerance (ZOT) focuses primarily on external customers with little attention paid to how internal customers (e.g., service employees) respond to services provided by internal functions, particularly IT function that supports employees’ IT use. Drawing on theory of administrative behavior and IT success literature, we conducted a study at a call center of a telecommunications firm and found that the impact of internal IT service quality (ITSQ) on employees’ service quality (ESQ) to external customers, …