`Doing things right', or `doing the right things'? Call centre migrations and dimensions of knowledge

Abstract

The nature of call centre `logics' and their predominance in routine commercial areas of the economy underscored much of the early research into call centre operations. Recent regulatory, structural and technological developments in advanced economies underscored subsequent migrations of call centres from the private to the public sector (Glucksman, 2004;Taylor and Bain, 2007). Further call centre migrations have also occurred into more skilled occupations in the public sector. Drawing on published and unpublished research on in-bound call centres operating in social work and nursing in the UK and Australia, this discussion analyses the dual migration of call centres from routine commercial operations to professional public sector services.The following discussion recognizes the viability of cost efficient and customer service dualities, however, given shifts into more complex areas of service delivery, pre-existing norms of professional practice became another important driver of call centre labour processes.

(Still) Up to No Good: Reconfiguring Worker Resistance and Misbehaviour in an Increasingly Unorganized World

“…Significant amongst these were the experiences of non-union workers within different sectors of economic activity; among large, small and multi-national organizations; and the inclusion of evidence across a broad range of occupations and work skills. Many of the employees we interviewed encountered considerable contextual and structural change, including privatization, redundancy, outsourcing, managerial restructuring of work, and most particularly, an increasingly more assertive managerial prerogative in resisting unionization (van den Broek, 2008).…”

“…These workers would also control the pace of their work by engaging in the regular practice of "flicking." Here CSRs hang up on customers, redirect calls to other areas of the corporation or to other firms, or leave customers waiting for lengthy periods (van den Broek, 2008). Similarly, at Delivery Co couriers spoke of finding "their own space" while under pressure to deliver parcels under very tight schedules.…”

“That type of thing does give you a boost”: Control, Self‐valorisation, and Autonomist Worker Copings in Call Centres

“…While such practice may be more expected in the context of public sector work, similar sentiments over customer wellbeing were also expressed in the private Sales‐Com centre, in which agents frequently faced dilemmas over pushing sales to vulnerable customers. Here, workers were shown to weigh the importance of targets against a self‐perceived need to “do the right thing” if not “doing things right” (Van den Broek ):

[Some] people will sell to anyone. Some of the top sellers, they’ll sell to a Granny.

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Language as raw material, scripts as tools and conversations as product: effects of linguistic production on job categories in outsourced call centres

“…First, language plays a key role in its production processes and products: language as raw material; scripts as tools; and conversations as a product. Second, the sector is important to the extent that it can absorb other activities and transform on‐site jobs into call centre activities under standardisation schemes, which we can refer to as callcenterisation processes (these include technologies applied to work organisation, the transferability of workers, vertical disintegration and privatisation) (Huws, ; Van den Broek, ). Third, callcenterisation includes specific negotiations and the struggle between agents for the control and recognition of linguistic performance within the ‘inescapable problematic’ of the indeterminacy of labour in service encounters (Holtgrewe, ; Taylor and Moore, : 3).…”