Call Centers

Inbound or Outbound

Whether a call center handles inbound or outbound calls determines the skill sets of the employees and the type of performance measures to which they are subject. Inbound call centers perform customer service functions and require employees to empathize with the customer, have good listening skills, and pay attention to detail. Employees are performance managed according to the service quality levels they achieve and the amount of time taken to resolve customer queries. Outbound call centers perform sales functions, and employees thus are required to have sales skills. Employees are performance managed on the number of sales they achieve and the proportion of the day they spend talking to customers.

Markets and Products

It is now acknowledged that the markets being served by call centers partly determine the nature of the work within them. Steve Frenkel and colleagues made this point after analyzing call center work as part of the mass customized bureaucracy (MCB). MCB concerns how management attempts to reconcile standardization of processes and products with customization, which focuses on individual customer requirements. Rosemary Batt observed the same in North American call centers as in other locations. [Page 140]Mass production approaches were found in back-office work and residential services, and high-involvement approaches were used for high-end niche products and business-to-business call centers.

James Wickham and Graínne Collins suggest that analyses of the customer relationships that feed call centers will lead to a more nuanced and differentiated understanding of the call center's various guises. To date, they suggest that work has been limited to call centers whose focus is on quantity. However, where more complex customer relationships exist, they suggest that call centers could be test beds for innovative forms of work organization.

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