Abstract
In call centres, language and communication are of crucial importance as the standards of service depend on the quality of talk (Cameron, 2000). To achieve this, many call centres develop scripts. Scripts are a set of rules that ‘typically prescribe, among others, the way in which routinized activities should be performed’ (Márquez-Reiter, Bou-Franch, 2017), and often, in what order. They may comprise specific words or phrases and the manner in which they should be said. In other words, they serve as instructional texts and guidelines ‘designed to control agents’ speech’ (p. 7). Scripts can be particularly effective in outbound calls such as telemarketing, telesales and (random) surveys (e.g. public opinion or customer satisfaction surveys), because they are more predictable and typically less complex than inbound calls (e.g. calls for information on bus and train schedules) (Forey and Lockwood, 2007). The extent to which scripts should or should not be relied upon has been a widely debated topic in many disciplines in recent years. The book Linguistic Ethnography of a Multilingual Call Center contributes to this debate through a case study of an outbound call centre in London, offering a comprehensive and systematic examination of the enactment and use of calling scripts.
Previous studies of script-based call centres viewed the scripted nature of agents’ work in terms of behaviour restriction, treating scripts as the culprit for deskilling and explored the resistance to workplace standardization. This monograph, in contrast, highlights the benefits of scripts for the employees. It thus adds to the body of knowledge of call centre practices. Written from the viewpoint of a fictional agent’s first day on the job, the book offers a new perspective on the contemporary debate on workplace standardization. The volume will be of interest to students and scholars interested in politeness research and intercultural communication as well as to call centre managers and business communication trainers.
The introductory chapter of the monograph lays out the volume’s conceptual framing and highlights the focus of the study: ‘the career of a calling script as it travels through the organization’ (p. 4). The introduction is followed by five chapters. Chapter 2 provides information on the field site, that is, a call centre called CallCentral. In particular, it offers an insight into the organizational design of the call centre such as its recruitment practices and staff training techniques, as well as call agents’ practices and their attitude towards work. One strength of this ethnographic study is the author’s insider perspective, which enables her to provide readers with a rare multi-layered insight into the investigated topic, something previous ethnographic studies on call centre work lacked, mainly due to difficulty in gaining full access to the site. This reluctance to grant access by many call centre companies may arise from their fear that sharing (sensitive) information with researchers will contribute to stigmatizing call centre work (as low-skilled routine work) and potentially harm their brand or reputation.
As the volume continues, readers can follow the transformation a script undergoes as it moves down the hierarchy, that is, from its production by corporate managers and clients to the alterations and adaptations undertook by campaign leaders and call centre agents. Using responses from semi-structured interviews conducted with call centre staff and a variety of field notes taken over a 4-year period, the author was able to tap into the perspectives of the participants on the work processes across all levels of the organization. This, in turn, provides readers with a glimpse into call centre employees’ understandings of and attitude towards the master script, which is at the centre of analysis. The author illustrates that, contrary to previous studies on the subject, call centre agents view the script as ‘a productive workplace tool, not an instrument of oppressive subordination’ (p. 191). Nonetheless, a tension can be observed in the data between the preference of management for a transactional approach, oriented towards maximizing the number of outbound calls (which management believe can be best achieved through a verbatim reproduction of the master script) and that of the call centre staff for a more personalized approach (one that deviates from the master script yet results in more successful calls). This tension has also previously been observed in interaction-oriented studies of outbound calls (e.g. Márquez Reiter, 2011).
Overall, this book adds new knowledge to the debate on scripted work environment as it refutes previous findings that imposed scripts lead to the deskilling of call centre agents. The findings shed a different and more positive light on the use of scripts in call centres. Scripts are not only regarded as a useful tool for managing staff performance (e.g. for making leads and meeting the targets set by the call centre), but also as a ‘valuable resource for developing one’s language skills’ (p. 58). As the book centres on a single case study, the results acquired from one SME (small and medium-sized company) cannot be generalized across the call centre industry, a limitation that the author is aware of. The author’s aim is also not to extricate call centre working conditions from the debate. Rather, the aim, as the author concludes, is to provide ‘detailed, complex, and lived account of the situated details of communicative practice, beyond interdisciplinary, ideological, and historical debates that have too rigidly characterized call centres through their scripted and standardized practices’ (p. 200).