The moderating role of job required creativity on the relationship between employee creativity and customer satisfaction in a call center environment

It has frequently been argued that improving employee creativity will translate into improved organizational performance, however few studies have actually provided support for this argument. Instead, many researchers have mainly focused on studying creativity as an outcome variable, assuming that by improving creativity, other desirable outcomes (e.g., improved organizational performance) will occur. The purpose of this study is to take a less common approach in the study of creativity by examining an important organizational performance outcome---customer satisfaction---as a consequence of employee creativity. Specifically, this study examined whether job required creativity influenced the relationship between employee creativity and customer satisfaction among call center agents working at a large U.S. based outsourcer that provides call center support for a major mobile phone service provider. The customer service agents' creative problem solving ability was assessed via responses on a creative problem solving task that were rated by quasi-expert and subject matter experts (SMEs), as well as the agents' supervisors who provided evaluations of their creativity. Customer satisfaction was assessed by the customer via an after call survey and job required creativity was operationalized according to the call type handled by the agent. It was observed that each of the creativity measures positively predicted customer satisfaction, but this relationship was not influenced by job required creativity as hypothesizes. Findings suggest that creativity may be an important knowledge, skills, and ability (KSA) among customer service employees, which appears to have traditionally been overlooked.