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Tensions and Variations in Call Centre Management Strategies

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Book cover Call Centres and Human Resource Management

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.

This chapter originally appeared in the Human Resource Management Journal, 12(4), pp. 67–85.

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Authors
  1. Maeve Houlihan
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. King’s College London, UK

    Stephen Deery (Professor of Human Resource and Public Sector Management) (Professor of Human Resource and Public Sector Management)

  2. School of Management, University of Bath, UK

    Nicholas Kinnie (Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management) (Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management)

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© 2004 Maeve Houlihan

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Houlihan, M. (2004). Tensions and Variations in Call Centre Management Strategies. In: Deery, S., Kinnie, N. (eds) Call Centres and Human Resource Management. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230288805_4

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