Tensions and Variations in Call Centre Management Strategies

Maeve Houlihan

Chapter 4 in Call Centres and Human Resource Management, 2004, pp 75-101 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Call centres have become part of everyday experience and hold a grip on public imagination. Predominantly, the call centre reflects a ‘mass production approach to customer service’ (Batt, 1999; Cameron, 2000). Volume is managed through task routinization, scripting, and a sophisticated information and communication technology (ICT) architecture configured to distribute, manage and monitor calls. Service quality is managed through a mixture of behavioural management and HR strategies. By these means, call centres seek to balance the logics of efficiency and the customer. The tension between these goals is keenly felt due to heightened visibility of cost trade-offs (Korczynski, 2001, p. 83; Sturdy, 2001, p. 7; Wallace, Eagleson and Waldersee, 2000, p. 174). This tension unmasks a series of conflicts: between costs and quality; between flexibility and standardization; and between constraining and enabling job design.

Keywords: Service Level; Human Resource Management; Customer Service; Call Centre; Work Design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
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DOI: 10.1057/9780230288805_4

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