The Gatekeeper’s Dilemma: “When Should I Transfer This Customer?”
通过在线实验模拟呼叫中心代理的转接决策，发现奖金激励有效但代理对转接惩罚过度反应，导致转接不足，可能增加呼叫中心成本。
When Should I Transfer This Customer? “Please hold while I transfer you to next level of support.” Most of us have been on the receiving end of this message. In this study, the authors look at transfers from the service worker’s perspective. They create an online experiment in which participants play the role of call center agents who need to decide whether to transfer a virtual service request or continue attempting to resolve it. Consistent with compensation schemes common in call centers, participants receive a bonus for each successful resolution and may pay a penalty if they transfer. The authors find that these incentives generally work well; however, agents appear to overreact to transfer penalties by handling more requests than they should and transferring too few requests. Although this may be good news for customers who dislike being transferred, such behaviors may be costly for the call center; thus, managers need to be careful when rolling out complex compensation schemes.