Financial service call centres: problems encountered by the grey market

Technological advances have resulted in financial service companies being able to make use of alternative channels such as call centres and the Internet to deliver their services to their customers. At the same time, there has been a major growth throughout Europe in the grey market consisting of people who grew up in an age of face-to-face contact with service suppliers. This paper reports on a programme of qualitative research looking at the grey market's perceptions of the call centre delivery channel. It discusses the difficulties encountered by this market and the negative views that are held. It also highlights the need for further research into this area if financial service organisations are going to address the issues raised and effectively satisfy the needs of this growing market segment.