Two months ago, I published a post addressing the ethics of emotional labour, particularly about call centre workers in India.   Today, Dr. Danielle van Jaarsveld drew our class’ attention to these workers from a human resource managerial perspective, and I realized: the foremost cause of emotional burnout among call centre workers was not the way they were required to treat others; it was the way they were being treated.

A call centre worker’s day is repetitive and stressful. There is no incentive or need for a worker to improve his or her service when being evaluated on the quantity rather than quality of calls completed.  Overly structured responses set by company policies result in frustrated callers and consequently, unhappy employees.

For many companies, call centres serve as the sole interaction link to consumers, yet companies lack the proper judgement to better invest in their customer service staff and positive customer relationships.  A high turnover ratio is desirable for inventory, not workers; average staff turnover for call centres is 30%. [1]

A vicious cycle has been created, the root cause being apathetic management. Companies must reprioritize and recognize that they are not dependent on technology and systems, but on people.

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[1] “Insights into the Indian call centre industry: can internal marketing help tackle high employee turnover?”

 

Works Cited

COMM 101 Lecture 19: People Culture and Teams

“Major Offshore Call Centre to Chase Australian Companies.” International Business Times. International Business Times AU, 25 Aug. 2011. Web. 7 Nov. 2013.

Pawan S. Budhwar, Arup Varma, Neeru Malhotra, Avinandan Mukherjee, (2009) “Insights into the Indian call centre industry: can internal marketing help tackle high employee turnover?”, Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 23 Iss: 5, pp.351 – 362