Bolton, S.C. and Houlihan, M. (2005) The (mis)representation of customer service. Work, Employment and Society, 19 (4). pp. 685-703. ISSN 0959-0170
Full text not available in this repository. (Request a copy from the Strathclyde author)Abstract
The growth of service work has introduced the customer as a third party to the employment relationship. Yet dominant images of customer relations portray docile service workers offering de-personalized care to sometimes aggressive but otherwise not much more agential customers. This paper seeks to bring humanity back into an analysis of customer service, and to reinterpret customer service interaction as a human relationship. Using labour process analysis and data from call-centre workers and their customers, we rerepresent customers as many-faceted, complex and sophisticated social actors and introduce a new conceptual framework of the roles customers play: as mythical sovereigns, functional transactants and moral agents, thereby offering a more accurate representation of customer service and the role of the actors involved in it.
| Item type: | Article |
|---|---|
| ID code: | 4423 |
| Keywords: | call centres, consumer, customer service, enterprise culture, labour process analysis, Commerce, Management. Industrial Management |
| Subjects: | Social Sciences > Commerce Social Sciences > Industries. Land use. Labor > Management. Industrial Management |
| Department: | Strathclyde Business School > Management |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing user: | Strathprints Administrator |
| Date Deposited: | 07 Nov 2007 |
| Last modified: | 12 Mar 2012 10:41 |
| URI: | http://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/4423 |
Actions (login required)
| View Item |