Improving service delivery through tacit knowledge within a government tax service’s call centre environment.

Abstract

In the current, turbulent and volatile economic conditions that organisations face, establishing customer relationships are key to ensuring maximum productivity. Utilising call centres remains a key way of engaging with customers. Call centre agents require the necessary knowledge and skills to provide efficient and effective customer service and resolve customer queries. However, most training and knowledge transfer are conducted mainly via theory-based methods and may not necessarily assist with current and new customer queries. This type of knowledge is usually derived from customer experience. This is hence known as tacit knowledge which is deeply embedded knowledge that is built over a period of timeand is not easily qualifiable. As organisations aim to deliver excellent customer services, there is a need to recognise the potential of tacit knowledge in improving service delivery. This study aimsto address this gap by exploring the potential of tacit knowledge to improve service delivery at a call centre environment within a government institution.The objective was to determine whether there are systems in place to capture tacit knowledge, determine the challenges in capturing tacit knowledge, ascertain whether tacit knowledge can impact service delivery as well as how to promote tacit knowledge and was underpinned by the Nonaka and Takeuchi SECI model. This study was undertaken in a call centre at a government institution and a census approach was used whereby 522 call centre agents were selected as the target population. A response rate of 98 agents was received which constituted to almost a fifth of the entire population thereby increasing validity. Data analysis included reliability analysis and descriptive statistics. The study confirmed capturing tacit knowledge and converting it into explicit knowledge can increase the knowledge of call centre agents, thereby having the potential to improve service delivery. The study indicated that the majority of call centre agents are not trained on how to capture tacit knowledge and there is a lack of processes regarding tacit knowledge management. The study recommends it is essential to include management as part of the tacit knowledge management process to create awareness and encourage the capturing and sharing of tacit knowledge. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in delays in processes and therefore the study was limited to responses received within a shorter period. Future researchers may consider a countrywide study be conducted with all of the organisation’s call centre staff and management.