2014 3rd International Conference on User Science and Engineering (i-USEr)
Role Transition Management:
Issues and Control in a Call Center
Siti Z. Z Abidin1, Nasiroh Omar2 and Zainura Idrus3
Faculty of Computer and Mathematical Sciences
University Teknologi MARA
Shah Alam, 40450 Selangor, Malaysia
{1zaleha, 2nasiroh}@tmsk.uitm.edu.my, 3zainura501@salam.uitm.edu.my
Abstract—In networked collaborative virtual environment, users
from dispersed locations can work as a group. Each user holds
certain roles along with responsibilities and access to resources.
However, the virtual environment is dynamic and users have to
change their roles frequently. The process is called role
transition and currently it is managed by users manually or
handled by specific domain applications automatically. In
manual management, users are burden with unnecessary
workload and the role transitions are prone to errors, whereas
the automatic handling is limited to its preset role transition
capability. This research aims to explore the provision of role
transition management. This exploration will uncover the vital
patterns for structured and flexible role transition management.
In order to achieve the objective, this research has chosen a call
centre in a leading banking system to capture real-life scenarios
via observation and interviews. For immerse and deep
understanding of role transition, personas have been utilized as a
mechanism of illustration to demonstrate the complex role
transition in the call center. All factors gathered in the study will
provide strong foundation in the design of an automated system
for facilitating role transition management that will balance the
workload of an authorized human and an automatic
programmable technical element in a system.
Keywords - call center; networked collaborative virtual
environment; role transition management; role-based
management; persona; scenario
I. INTRODUCTION
In network collaborative virtual environment, entities such
as users, tasks and resources [1] are dynamic and they change
from time to time. One of the suitable methods to manage the
dynamic entities is through role-based management (RBM). In
such management, tasks are not assigned directly to users,
instead, they are assigned to a virtual entity called role [2].
Then, resources that are required to perform the task are
identified and assigned to the role [3]. Lastly, qualified users
who will perform the tasks are selected and also assigned to the
role [4]. Such management attempts to minimize the impact of
changed entity over others. Hence, in RBM, roles are the
center of management that glues tasks, resources and users.
Role has control to determine who it can be assigned to, along
with the tasks, responsibilities, and access restrictions to
allocated resources. Since users are dynamic [5], they change
or leave their roles as they wish at anytime and the process is
called role transition. The role transition is not only applied to
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users, it is also involved dynamic tasks and resources. For
instance, when a project advances to a new phase, it needs a
new set of roles and users [6]. A smooth transit in matching
and passing the role between old and new users is crucial.
Hence, a proper management of role transition is vital for a
continuous and successful collaboration [7-9].
This research aims to explore the provision of role
transition management. This exploration will uncover the vital
patterns for structured and flexible role transition management.
As a case study, a call center in a leading banking system is
chosen to capture real-life scenarios via observation and
interviews. Based on the qualitative data collection, a role
transition management and its behavior are determined.
Eleven environmental factors for role transition scenarios have
been extracted from the case study. The knowledge is treated
as the foundation for modeling a role transition management,
which has received less attention in the previous studies.
Moreover a few issues on role transition management have
been identified.
II. RELATED WORKS
This section describes briefly the concept and issues of role
transition management. Since the study involves virtual and
complex environments, this work employs a controlled abstract
scene via the use of personas and scenarios. Therefore, the
next sub-sections cover role transition management and brief
description of personas and scenarios.
A. Role TransitionManagement
Role transition management is defined as the ability to
control role occurrence and transference when dealing with
users in dynamic virtual environment. The management is
important since it has a great impact to the collaborative works
that consequently linked to economy, resource and users. The
disrupted work can reduce economic gain in terms of money
and time. It also affects access right to resources, secured and
private functionalities of the system. Moreover, unmanaged
role transition consistently imposes pressure to users and in
turn leads to other negative issues [10]. Such negative issues
include cases where users refuse to accept the changes and fail
to adapt to the new designated role structure which affects their
emotions negatively. Consequently, the impact is on their job
satisfaction and commitment that leads to absenteeism,
withdrawal, disloyal and abandoned from the collaboration
 2014 3rd International Conference on User Science and Engineering (i-USEr)
[10-12]. Although some users can manage the changes, the
unsupportive teammates will lessen their desire to continue
with the collaboration [12].
Currently, the common methods to manage role transition
are performed by users manually or handled by specific
domain applications automatically. The manual approach is
appropriate for small systems where the person in charge is
expected to be familiar with some information such as
workflows, teammates’ strength and qualifications [13] related
to the collaboration. However, human is prone to errors and
incapable of prolonged working hours. On the other hand, in
larger and complex systems, the management is conducted by
an automated system via specific algorithms. For instance, in
the event of crisis and shortage of users, the algorithms will
find the best possible ways to match users to roles without
breaching any role policies [13]. Some algorithms seek for role
optimization especially in specialized collaborative
environment [14]. Moreover, other automatic systems provide
alternative solutions to ensure continuous collaboration in order
to sustain system efficiency especially in collaborative games
[15]. Nevertheless, most of automation systems are suitable
for structured and predefined static environment.
B. Personas and Scenarios
Personas represent a group of real people with their
activities and behaviors. Persona was first introduced by
Cooper who proposes that a minimum of three to twelve
distinctive personas are practical for expressing user population
[16]. In order to make the persona memorable and
distinguishable, each persona is portrayed as an action-figure
[17]. In addition, it is claimed that literatures are missing the
useful details of designing personas [18]. Thus, a practical
guideline for designing personas from empirical data is
proposed which is collected qualitatively via interviews or
observations. Furthermore, personas should be designed
around their behavioral patterns [19] that include solutions,
time relevant to the context, probable usage environments,
relevant relationship and goals. Each persona must be unique
to signify a specific character. Therefore, the combination of
several personas will portray the studied environment.
Here, in this research, the selected environment is a call
center that supports a banking system and the main focus of the
study is on role transition management.
III. UNDERSTANDING ROLE TRANSITION MANAGEMENT
BEHAVIOR
A call center is selected because it involves monetary value
and it is one of the most valuable assets to human. The chosen
bank is the largest bank and financial group in Malaysia and
internationally recognized. It has 401 branches in Malaysia
and is the leading listed company on the Malaysian Stock
Exchange, Bursa Malaysia. The call center adopts RBM
system where there exist roles, users, tasks and resources
which can provide various views of role transition
management. In order to understand the role transition
management in these complex environments, the abstract scene
analysis method [20] is adopted for qualitative experiment.
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A. Capturing Real-Life Data
Acquiring real-life data is essential to this research for two
reasons. First, it provides important insight about role
transition in a real-life situation. Second, it gathers empirical
data for significant factors especially focus for the causes that
trigger any role transition and the involved roles in the
specified environments. The study utilizes interview and
observation approaches to manually extract the richness of role
transition process. Role Based Management (RBM) is used as
the base theory where role remains the center of management.
The main tools used to capture the interview sessions are audio
recorder and camera.
B. Participants
Four call center representatives have been chosen to
participate in this research. They have been working and
experience several different roles from two different
departmental sections. Two of them have been working for
more than five years as the representatives, one person just
joined the organization and the last person also work for more
than 5 years, but as a supervisor.
C. Data Collection
The data gathering starts by visiting the call centre which
last for more than four hours. Beside observation, a set of
questions have been designed for the interview. The ways
questions are designed have taken into consideration related to
role transition procedures, problems and issues. A few follow-
up interviews are also conducted and finally, two additional
meeting ends the data collection phase.
D. Data Analysis
The qualitative data collection (interview and observation)
provides a full picture of role transition management in the
center. Then, analysis is made on the roles, users, tasks and
resources in relation to role transition. Hence, the analysis
contributes to the general understanding of role transition
characteristics, controlling mechanism, behavior, motives and
goals.
E. The Call Center and its Scenarios
The call center is divided into five sections and Fig. 1
illustrates the structure of the organization. The sections are as
follows:
• VIP: The section that provides services to VIP customers
regarding credit card, saving and general issues.
• Credit Card: This section is responsible to manage call
regarding credit card that covers issues such as balance
enquiry, lost of card, activation and many more.
• Saving and General: This section is to assist customers
in relation to their saving accounts and general issues
including any complaints.
• Socio Network: The representative’s duty is to respond to
all messages received via socio network medium such as
e-mail, facebook and twitter.
• Trust and Investment: The section only manages call
regarding trust and investment issues.
 2014 3rd International Conference on User Science and Engineering (i-USEr)
Fig. 1. The call center organization structure
Call representatives in each section are holding particular
roles and bounded by a set of responsibilities, tasks and
expectations. However, with the authority given to them by the
upper level management, they can change their roles.
Based on the collected data, four distinctive action-figure
personas have been developed. These personas characterize
the real life call center representatives. Their actions have been
recognized from observing their management and role
transition pattern. The four personas are as follows:
Persona 1: Shah
Shah works at the Universe Bank call center department as
a supervisor. He has been working there for more than five
years. He understands very well the job specification in each
section. He always has a computer to monitor all the incoming
calls. His main task is to ensure that customers always get
immediate response with minimum waiting time. In addition,
he will involve in any ad-hoc situations such as handling
problematic customers or shortage in representatives.
Persona 2: Lina Ahmad
Lina Ahmad is a young lady in her twenties who has been
working in the call center for more than five years. She is
currently assigned to General Banking section after serving the
Credit Card sections. With the previous experiences, she is
able to handle the given duties.
Persona 3: Kumar Mutusami
He is a trainee at the center, specifically at the Unit Trust
section. He just joints the company for three days and this is
his first job. He is in his early twenties.
Persona 4: Farzana Yah
She is currently working in the VIP section that handles
VIP customers. She is trained to pay extra attention and care to
the VIP customers. She has been working with the company
for more than five years.
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With the roles presented by all the personas, the next
section describes the scenarios of role transition management
in the call center.
IV. THE CALL CENTER CONTROL
There are eleven scenarios that contribute to role transition
cases. Each scenario is divided into two parts. The first part
explains the activities that occur in the call center, whereas the
second part (grey box) is the analysis of scenarios from the
RBM point of view.
Scenario 1: Role Allocation
Lina Ahmad starts her job by logging into the system
specified for her section. She is not authorized to log into other
sections. At the end of her shift, Lina Ahmad log out from the
system which indicates the end of her job for the day.
When Lina Ahmad log into the system, she is taking the role
of representative (General Banker). Later, when she log out
from the system and releases such role, a role transition occurs
to indicate that her role as a representative is changed to a
worker.
Control:
• The system security module ensures that only the
authorized members are accepted to hold such respective
roles.
Scenario 2: Role Assistance
Once Lina Ahmad has log in to perform her duty, there are
times that she has to give help to other sections due to too
many incoming calls that lead to a long pending call queue.
Therefore, the telephone lines are opened to other sections for
assistance and some of the queues are passed to Lina.
However, this situation is only applicable to Credit Card. The
VIP and Unit Trust sections remain restricted to their selected
members at all times.
When Lina takes extra tasks from other sections, the tasks are
assigned to her role. She is still holding a single role which is
the General Banking representative but with additional tasks.
Control:
• Shah distributes extra tasks to other roles when the
pending queue begins to reach a certain limit.
• He also ensures that busy members are continuously held
to their roles and any request to leave the role is rejected.
• No role transition occur.
Scenario 3: Role Quantity
Farzana Yah is a representative who works in VIP section
where she has to provide extra care to VIP customers. When a
situation where at least 25 representatives must active at any
given time, Farzana Yah is not allowed to leave her task (log
out or temporarily leave her tasks) if the quantity fall below 25.
She has to wait for other representatives to come back and
active before she can leave her task.
 2014 3rd International Conference on User Science and Engineering (i-USEr)
Farzana Yah is playing VIP role and is not allowed to leave
her role whenever the active role is less than 25. Based on the
instruction, she remains in her role. No role transition.
Control:
• Shah instruct VIP representative to remain hold the current
role.
• The instruction is delivered through verbal communication
or screen pop-up message.
• Shah allows any request to VIP roles.
• When the quantity of the total representatives is 25 and
above, Shah allows any representatives to hold and release
their roles.
Scenario 4: Role Promotion
Kumar Mutusami is a trainee who starts at the lowest level
of the trainee position. As he masters the trainee’s tasks, he is
transited to a higher trainee position. Shah as his supervisor is
responsible to evaluate Kumar Mutusami’s performance.
Kumar Mutusami is holding a trainee role. When he is
transited to a higher trainee role, role transition occurs. He
releases the old role and takes a new role.
Control:
• Shah assigns a higher trainee role to Kumar.
• Shah releases the old role from Kumar.
Scenario 5: Role Demotion
During the training period, Kumar Mutusami is at risk of
being demoted to lower position if he cannot achieve a
satisfactory performance. As a supervisor, Shah is responsible
to access Kumar Mutusami’s performance from time to time.
If Kumar Mutusami demoted to lower position, role transition
occurs as he changes his position.
Control:
• Shah is responsible to assign the lower role and release the
higher role from Kumar.
Scenario 6: Role Notification
When VIP and Unit Trust roles have reached to a certain
level of queue, Lina Ahmad and other representatives (non-
member) have to help out.
In such situation, Lina Ahmad is performing extra task which
is taking message for the section.
Control:
• Shah assigns the task of taking message to other role.
• No role transition occur.
Scenario 7: Stable Condition
When the queues for VIP and Investment roles have move
back to normal, there is no need for extra assistant to take any
message.
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Lina Ahmad is released from handling extra tasks.
Control:
• Shah as the supervisor in charge releases the task of taking
message from Lina Ahmad and allows her to continue with
her normal role.
• Shah will also make sure that members of the VIP role
remain unchanged.
Scenario 8: Ad-Hoc Condition
In the event of problem where Kumar Mutusami fails to
handle customers, Shah as the supervisor will chip in and takes
over the task to handle the customer. He will continue to assist
the customer until the problem solved.
Shah is performing the task of representative as long as the
problem remains unsolved.
Control:
• Shah assigns the task of representative to himself while
maintaining his current role.
• There is no role transition taking place.
Scenario 9: Off-Peak Condition
Off-peak time is usually started in the middle of the night
until early morning. During this time, there is less incoming
calls. Hence, supervisor assigns a few tasks from different
sections (Credit Card) to Lina Ahmad. Now, she has to answer
the calls for her section and others.
During off-peak time, Lina Ahmad performs variety of other
tasks in addition to her current tasks.
Control:
• Shah assigns Credit Card tasks to Lina Ahmad.
• No role transition occur.
Scenario 10: Role Replacement
There are times when Farzana Yah replaces her friends in
General Banking, Credit Card sections who are on leave. She
performs her friends’ tasks for the whole shift or just for a few
hours. However, the role replacement is subject to supervisor’s
approval.
Farzana Yah can take different role other than hers. There
exist conditions as such she can only perform the role for a
few hours or for the whole shift.
Control:
• Shah assigns Farzana Yah to a different section
temporarily.
• Role transition occur.
Scenario 11: Role Confirmation
When the training is completed, Kumar Mutusami is
promoted to a representative post. Prior to promotion, Shah
ensures that Kumar Mutusami has a satisfactory performance
as a trainee.
 2014 3rd International Conference on User Science and Engineering (i-USEr)
In this case, the role transition has occurred. Kumar Mutusami
is now having a different role.
Control:
• Shah assigns Kumar Mutusami to a new role.
V. ABSTRACT SCENE ANALYSIS
The scenarios in the case study provide various techniques
in managing role transition based-on RBM environment. Each
scenario reveals when the role transition occurs and how it is
controlled. Supervisor is the main controller in managing role
transition. He has the right to control, accept and reject any
role transition based on his judgment. However, call
representatives have the right to request for role transition,
even though it is subjected to the supervisor’s approval.
Therefore, any programmable technical element in automatic
role transition management system is only to support
supervisor after he has made his decision as opposed to assist
him during decision making.
Since the environmental factors are responsible to trigger
the role transition, the control is obviously not relying on one
authorized entity. Role is not the center of management. For
example, when Kumar Muthusami has gone through several
different work environments, his roles change according to his
situations. Hence, role does not have any authority to give the
control, rather it is always available to be held and released by
a supervisor through verbal instructions or messages that rely
on the electronic communication system.
Based on the personas and scenarios, there are eleven
environmental factors that trigger the change of a role (see
Table I). The factors are role allocation, role assistance, role
quantity, role promotion, role demotion, role notification,
stable condition, ad-hoc condition, off-peak condition, role
replacement and role confirmation.
With this kind of role arrangement, resources that used in
tasks are opened to representative at all time. Unfortunately,
the representative can only access the resources when tasks are
assigned to them. Therefore, the only security that prevents
them from accessing secured resources is in the system log.
Any illegal action can only be detected after the action has
been performed through the log.
VI. CONCLUSION
This paper discusses a qualitative experiment with the
purpose to collect data on roles’ behavior and transition
management. The data collected is used to design four
personas situated in several call center sections involving
various role transition scenarios. Specifically, the personas
TABLE I. ROLE TRANSITION VS. ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS
Freeze Role Unfreeze (Active) Role
Role Changed Role Unchanged Role Added
role quantity role allocation role notification role assistance
role promotion stable condition ad-hoc
role demotion condition
role replacement off-peak
role confirmation condition
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are positioned in eleven scenarios to derive the various role
transition management activities. With the existing theories on
role transition, environmental states, controlling patterns on
tasks, resources and users, it is concluded from the case study
that manually human controlled role transition can be
automated based on the supervisor’s roles by applying the
significant factors gathered in the analyses. Further
investigation and search should be carried out to structure the
management so that balance workload can be distributed
among human and automated systems.
VII. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors would like to thank Universiti Teknologi
MARA and Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia for the
financial support under the national grant 600-RMI/ERGS 5/3
(33/2012).
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