ECONOMIC ANALYSIS

Economic Analysis

Economic Analysis

Introduction

This piece explores global dimensions of a multinational bank offshore call center and how these shape the structures and practices of call center work. Using the theoretical frame Global economy of signs and selves, which weaves some ideas from the work of Scott Lash, John Urry, Pierre Bourdieu et Erving Goffman, and the study looks at some dimensions and conditions of global service work experienced by Filipino agents. By making explicit dimensions of the call center work regime that are under-emphasized, undervalued and misrecognized, this article attempts to link the global, the local and the personal as it highlights the social and symbolic work involved in call center production.

Exploring multinational bank call center work

This paper draws from a study on call centers I did for my thesis in sociology.1 The way I saw it, call centers in the Philippines have given rise to a growing section of society required by the imperatives of their work to “defy” time and space, synchronizing their cycles and routines according to the rhythms and movements of a distant, alien social dimension (i.e., the host locale toward which their service is geared). For this research, I worked as a customer service agent from January to June 2006 — driven by this fascination with remote, real-time service delivery which spans and blurs borders, committed to this vision of sociological research, and consumed by questions such as: What does real-time service provision in a globalized platform entail? How does such a complex structure impinge on the work regimes and the day-to-day routines of Filipino agents?

For almost six months, I was juggling these two roles, as sociologist and agent, trying to gain first hand knowledge of call center work by carrying out the service myself. I was part of a call center, which I refer to here as Callcorp, as an agent for one of their customer service accounts. Callcorp also provides sales, technical support, directory assistance and collections service for other corporate clients. I was under the account which I call here “Interconnect” customer service, a known high-profile corporation in the area of computer technology and software, which also provides dial-up internet service to American customers (Table 1).

Along with over a hundred other agents, I handled general account inquiries and complaints, processed password resets, account updates and billing inquiries pertaining to the dial up account, addressing on average about 60-70 calls a day, which agents are expected to accomplish within a set average handling time of 5.5 minutes. I carried out my work from around 11 p.m. to 8 a.m. the next day, give or take a few minutes to an hour depending on the actual schedule I had for a given day; as shifts and schedules change, as I found out later, in order to match staffing requirements with call forecasts. Like other agents I went through accent, soft skills and product training, learned how to empathize and tried to speak like an American, contended with the queue of calls which came as ...