The Call Center “Industry”: Human Issues

Understanding – The Call Center “Industry”

There has been some dispute amongst researchers as to whether it is appropriate to refer to such a thing as the “call center industry”. As Bain and Taylor point out, “despite similarities in the integration of computer and telephone technologies, centers differ in relation to a number of important variables—size, industrial sector and market, complexity and length of call cycle time, nature of operations (inbound, outbound or combined), the nature and effectiveness of representative institutions including trade unions, and management styles and priorities”. To this list of variables, Callaghan and Thompson would add the “degree of product complexity and variability and the depth of knowledge required to deal with the service interaction”. Bain and Taylor argue that it is more appropriate to use the term “sector”, as call Centers are found across a wide range of industries and may be similar primarily in terms of their core technologies. They do note, however, that there is a professional literature and a collective identity that is maintained and developed through conferences and forums. Belt, Richardson and Webster (2000) agree that call centers are not an ‘industry’ as the term is generally defined, but rather represent certain ways of delivering various services using the telephone and computer technologies across traditional industry boundaries. However, these authors provide three strong reasons defending the practice of referring to call centers as an industry:

First, the call center community often defines itself as an industry, with numerous national and international call center conferences and workshops taking place each year, industry journals and call center forums organized at local levels.

Second, the labor force requirements of call centers are often the same across sectors. This means that many, though not all, call centers share a common labor pool.
Third, the organizational templates and technologies used tend to be very similar, regardless of the sector.

To this one might add the remarkable similarities that international researchers have found between technologies used, work practices and key issues including monitoring, control, training, and labor demographics for workers in countries as diverse as Germany, Japan, Australia, Greece, Canada, the US, the UK and the Netherlands.

HUMAN ISSUES IN CALL-CENTER INDUSTRY

For Further Information Visit >>> ManagementFunda