Social Science Computer Review

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Being Professional: Organizational Control in Indian Call Centers Premilla D’Cruz and Ernesto Noronha Social Science Computer Review 2006; 24; 342 DOI: 10.1177/0894439306287979 The online version of this article can be found at: http://ssc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/24/3/342

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Being Professional Organizational Control in Indian Call Centers

Social Science Computer Review Volume 24 Number 3 Fall 2006 342-361 © 2006 Sage Publications 10.1177/0894439306287979 http://ssc.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com

Premilla D’Cruz Ernesto Noronha Indian Institute of Management

The relationship between technocratic and socioideological control in organizations is contested among scholars. In an attempt to understand this complex interlinkage, the present study examined organizational control processes in inbound and outbound call centers in Bangalore, India. Relying on qualitative interviews and thematic analysis, the study demonstrated how organizations invoke the concept of professionalism in their employees. Organizational efforts in this direction result not only in employee compliance but also internalization of professionalism such that agents’ sense of self changes to embrace employer-defined professionalism. Socioideological control thus sets the stage for the acceptance and effectiveness of technocratic control. Rather than viewing organizational identities and organizational cultures as additional or separate extensions of the substantive, structural, material dimensions of control, the findings of the study highlight that socioideological and technocratic forms of control build on and feed each other. Nonetheless, the managerial notion of control espoused through the appeal to professional identity continues to be contested. Keywords: organizational control; qualitative analysis; professionalism; technocratic control; control theory

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he development of call centers is situated at the intersection of rapidly expanding information and communication technologies, reengineered business processes, a changing (or changed) profiles of customer needs and expectations and a prevailing culture of occupational restructuring (Houlihan, 2000). Recent research has described call centers as “electronic sweatshops” (Fernie & Metcalfe, 1998) and “assembly lines in the head” (Taylor & Bain, 1999) that emphasize factory-like division of labor (Taylor & Bain, 1999; Van den Broek, 2004), with jobs being characterized as dead end, with low complexity, low control, repetition, and routineness (Knights & McCabe, 1998; Taylor & Bain, 1999). Tasks have been simplified, services must conform to predetermined design specifications, and the production process has been constructed to minimize labor costs. Call center agents are stated to be mouthpieces who follow scripted dialogues and detailed instructions, and their work is closely monitored, tightly controlled, and highly routinized thanks to extensive reliance on highly sophisticated computer technology (Deery & Kinnie, 2004). Zapf, Isic, Bechtoldt, and Blau (2003) quote studies that show that call center agents have poor task complexity, task variety, and job control, which cause dissatisfaction. These descriptions of

Authors’ Note: This research was funded by the Indo-Dutch Programme on Alternative Development Project 5.5.26. 342 Downloaded from http://ssc.sagepub.com at SAGE Publications on December 5, 2007 © 2006 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

D’Cruz, Noronha / Organizational Control in Indian Call Centers

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call centers emphasize bureaucratic technocratic models of control, leaving out the more recent conceptualizations of control in the workplace. In some sense, Ouchi’s (1979) observations of organization theory concentrating on bureaucratic form of control to the exclusion of all else would also be applicable to call center research. It is therefore required to emphasize that discipline and control, in today’s corporations, do not reside in traditional bureaucratic regulations alone. Instead, corporate culture has emerged as a more subtle form of normative control, one that transforms each employee into a self-regulating, self-policing subject, unable to achieve any political, critical, or moral detachment from the power of the employer. This employee is hardworking, flexible, and docile; he or she breaks easily into a smile when meeting the organization’s customers, an employee who experiences guilt and shame with alacrity but has no sense of justice or injustice. This is an employee who is constitutionally unable to turn his or her malaise and despair into resistance, a employee who has developed the utmost psychological, social, and material dependence on the corporation. The controls of today’s corporation are seen as infinitely subtler, reaching to the very core of each employee’s sense of selfhood and identity, defining his or her very being (Gabriel, 1999). Cultural-ideological control targets values, ideas, beliefs, emotions, and identification of employees (Alvesson, 2001). It invites employees to reimagine themselves (Fournier, 1999). Identity regulation is increasingly pervasive and an intentional modality of organizational control. It is considered to be a less obtrusive, and potentially more effective, means of organizational control than are methods that rely on external stimuli. In fact, management is about regulating people’s identities—establishing standards for how employees should define themselves (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002). Identity is seen as an object of management control and regulation to accomplish a “subjectivity base” for the right kind of action (Alvesson, 2001). Discourses of quality management, service management, innovation, and knowledge work are expressions of an increased managerial interest in regulating employees’ “insides”—their selfimage, their feelings, and their identifications. Induction, training, and promotion procedures are developed in ways that have implications for the shaping and direction of employees’ identities. When an organization becomes a significant source of identification for individuals, then corporate identity informs (self-)identity work. Central life interest, coherence, distinctiveness, direction, positive value, and self-awareness are the overlapping and interrelated ways of constructing and exploring identity (Alvesson & Wilmott, 2002). The relationship between technocratic and socioideological forms of control is complex. These different techniques are not necessarily independent but can map over one another (Fournier, 1999). Van Maanen and Kunda (1989) observe that rather than substituting other forms of control, normative socioideological control operated as an additional and complementary layer of control. Socioideological and technocratic forms of control build on and feed each other (Alvesson & Karreman, 2004). There is no clear cut, simple, and mechanical explanation for the way control forms interact and interplay. The interplay between—or hybridization of—the control forms is a social process and not an algorithm or a program. This article reinforces this position. We argue that socioideological forms of control, demonstrated in the present study through the notion of being professional, paves the way for the acceptance of strict technocratic forms of control. Evetts (2003) argues that despite the different interpretations of the word professional, there is extensive agreement about the appeal of the idea of profession and professionalism


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Social Science Computer Review

and its increased use in all work contexts. The word professional is gradually used as a marketing device to appeal to customers, in mission statements and organizational aims and objectives to motivate employees, and as a disciplinary mechanism for governing at a distance. Both in new and existing occupational and organizational contexts, service and knowledge workers and other employees are having to reconstitute themselves as professionals who are self-controlled and self-motivated to perform in ways the organization defines as appropriate. Professionalism is articulated in terms that align professional conduct and competence with self- and personal development. The appeal to professionalism in new occupational domains serves to regulate autonomous conduct in the name of oneself (for who wants to be unprofessional?) and in the name of the client. The use of the discourse of professionalism serves to inculcate “appropriate” work identities, conducts, and practices. The reconstitution of employees as professionals involves more than just a process of relabeling, it also involves the delineation of “appropriate work identities.” In new and existing occupational and organizational contexts, service and knowledge workers are having to and, indeed, choosing to reconstitute themselves as self-managing and selfmotivated employees (Fournier, 1999). Those workers who act like professionals are selfmotivated to perform in ways the organization defines as appropriate and in return are rewarded with career promotions. These professional workers are very keen to grasp and lay claim to the normative values of professionalism. In effect, professionalism is being used to convince, cajole, and persuade employees to perform and behave in ways which the organization deems to be appropriate, effective, and efficient (Evetts, 2003). Reimagining labor as offering professional service serves to construct an image of quality and reliability appealing to the increasingly discerning and demanding customer. Organization professionals are governed in the name of customer. The appeal to professionalism serves to efface direct control through the articulation of the needs of and in the name of the customers. The image of the customer and the emphasis on quality have been central to the rearticulation of organizational control. The customers are placed in a sovereign position in the organization’s discourse (Du Gay & Salaman, 1992), made explicit in the core values (“We put our customers first”) where the organization offers itself as guarantor to the customer. This new “customer orientation” is mobilized to call for the emotionalization of work deemed central for satisfying customers. Employees are urged to “own customers’ problems,” “see through the eyes of the customers,” and “do whatever it takes to satisfy customers’ needs.” The customer is mobilized as a resource to legitimize the regulation of conduct, to responsibilize conduct, and at the same time this effaces direct managerial control. It is for the customer (at least partly) that employees have to display particular forms of conduct. Thus this government in the name of the customer serves to legitimize the organization’s actions and decisions and to efface organizational control (Fournier, 1999). The emphasis of customer orientation is embedded in the appeal to professionalism in the call center industry in India, which so far has been ignored by researchers (e.g., Ramesh, 2004; Taylor & Bain, 2005) in spite of it being repeatedly emphasized by call center agents in their daily discourse. We show that being professional is at the heart of organizational control, which allows for placing primacy on customer satisfaction and calls for managing the dichotomous self to enjoy the privilege of being professional but at the same time enduring the possibilities of monitoring surveillance. At the same time, this appeal to the professional is not totalizing and does provide space for resistance.



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The Study The present article, describing the experience of organizational control of inbound and outbound call center agents in Bangalore, draws from a larger study whose focus was to understand subjective meanings and interpretations of work experiences of employees in the Information Techonology Enabled Services–Business Process Outstanding (ITES-BPO) sector in Mumbai and Bangalore, India. The mandate of the study deemed the adoption of phenomenology as its research strategy. Moreover, given the plethora of studies on call centers, phenomenology seemed to be an appropriate method that could prod us to question what seemed to be taken for granted. Crotty (1998) states that phenomenology invites us to place our usual understanding in abeyance and have a fresh look at things. It requires us to break with our familiar acceptance of the phenomenon and awaken the wild flowering of the world and mind. Our adherence to this outlook helped us to uncover the sources of cultural ideological control, namely the appeal to the professional identity of all call center employees, which has been glossed over by one researcher after another. Because phenomenology also lays the ground for critical methodology (Crotty, 1998), there was a seamless movement toward critical scrutiny of issues. What seemed natural was problematized (Alvesson & Skoldberg, 2000). In this sense, we repeatedly raised questions as to why call center agents in India accepted the conditions of work that many researchers had described as closely monitored, tightly controlled, and highly routinized? Why was there no collective resistance in the Indian context? This led us to explore our core theme of being professional, which began to emerge during the course of our interviews. Our central question then focused on trying to capture the meaning of the word professional and its relationship with control. Following van Manen’s (1998) approach, the conversational interview was used in the present study to explore and gather experiential narrative material that would serve as a resource for developing a richer and deeper understanding of the experience being studied. Though unstructured, the process was disciplined by focusing on the fundamental question that prompted the research. Yet the clarity of the research question did not preclude exploring issues, such as being professional, that emerged during the interview because the researchers were aware that they could generate important insights into the phenomenon under study. As is the case in the phenomenological tradition, participants in the study should be people who have experienced the phenomenon. Potential participants were identified through snowball sampling and contacted via the telephone. Once the researchers introduced themselves and explained to the participants how they had come to know of them and their contact details, the purpose of the phone call and the study were explained. Potential participant questions were answered; these questions essentially related to the purpose of the study and the length of time for the interview. If they agreed to participate, a convenient time and place were set up. Permission to record the interviews was sought, and because participants were explained that recording the interview helped to maintain the accuracy of their accounts, as compared to compiling field notes where accuracy could be compromised because of faulty recall later, they agreed. All interviews were conducted in English and were later transcribed by the research assistant. Data of 12 agents (7 male and 5 female) from outbound call centers and 10 agents (8 males and 2 female) from inbound call centers, whose ages ranged from 21 to 29 years, were used for this article. The treatment and analysis of participant narratives followed Van Manen’s (1998) thematic analysis. Significant statements that captured the meaning of the phenomenon were Downloaded from http://ssc.sagepub.com at SAGE Publications on December 5, 2007 © 2006 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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identified and were then reduced to themes. Through the process of completing sententious or wholistic and highlighting or selective thematic analyses, which aim at touching at the core of the notion under study and capturing its details and nuances (Van Manen, 1998), the researchers attempted to understand the essential structure of participants’ experiences. Concomitantly, through the analysis process, the researchers observed the mechanisms and processes by which control was exercised over employees and, these are described and discussed in the sections that follow.

Being Professional: The Notion at the Heart of Organizational Control The initiation of the control process begins at the time of induction through organizational socialization. Employees are repeatedly told that they are professionals who have to meet up to specified norms of behavior. Complying with these expectations ensures their success in their organization and the continuity of business; in other words, it serves as a source of competitive advantage for both the individual and the organization. Induction is followed by training, where employees are instructed in voice, accent, and communication skills, customer handling and emotional labor skills, process knowledge, orientation to customer culture, and tips on handling difficult situations. The training process once again emphasizes the notion of being professional. Following the training period, premium put on professional behavior and the expectation that it will be demonstrated at all times is reinforced through direct exhortation and through the reward–punishment system. Not only does this ensure that agents fall in line, but it results in an internalization of the notion such that agents’ senses of self change to embrace the direct and indirect, behavioral and cognitive correlates of employer-defined professionalism. A professional is defined as a person who has the desire to satisfy customers, puts aside personal problems and concentrates on service, accepts stringent monitoring and shift timings, is able to withstand strains and pressures of work, and is receptive to the idea of taking on another identity in the interest of the organization and the customer. According to the agents, the adoption of a professional demeanor led people to behave objectively and rationally and perform optimally at all times. Agents were proud to work with multinational companies and speak to people in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. Professionals, according to agents, could take calls in their sleep. Professionals were confident about the product knowledge and were not afraid of barging. A professional had nothing to worry because he or she did not infringe any rules while taking calls. A professional would not play favorites or show any leniency when dealing with customers or with colleagues who were friends. All customers, whether old or young, male or female, were to be treated alike. Providing service with a smile did not mean being sympathetic. One required to avoid being sentimental with customers and offer them concessions. Just as displaying emotions or going soft with the customer was considered unprofessional, so was glossing over a friend’s failure to adhere to discipline laid down by the company. My team leader [TL] is very close to me. He is younger to me. He is 21 and I am 23. He was my trainer. When he was a trainer, I was in his batch. When I came to floor, he was promoted as a TL and luckily he became my TL. We are very close friends. But he is very professional.



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Before we enter the floor, we have to actually leave our mobile phones in the locker; if we fail to do so a fine has to be paid. On one particular day I carried the phone to the floor. My friend [the TL] caught me and asked me to hand over the phone to him. I told him not to tell anybody about it and he insisted that I hand over the phone to him. When I handed over the phone he told me to pay the fine. He told me, “Friendship outside, be professional inside.” I was lucky because I was in his team and I learned many things.

Discipline and work were given priority over relationships. Even close relationships such as meeting one’s partner were to be given a secondary status to work. Adherence to the appeal of professionalism required sacrifice of quality time with one’s partner in the interest of the organization and at the expense of relationships. To this end, the onus of controlling absenteeism was on the agent. If my girlfriend asks me to stay home and spend time with her, I tell her “No, be professional, you have to work.” When we were on X project, I came home at 11:00 a.m. and went to sleep. While I sleep, she works. When I am on my way to office, she finishes her shift. She tries calling me when I start taking calls, but I can’t talk to her when I am on calls.

Sexual escapades on the floor were not tolerated. Relationships in the workplace were tolerated to the extent that they did not affect work. The organization did not interfere or was unconcerned with the agent’s life after office hours but wanted him or her to maximize productivity during the course of the working day. Your relationships need to be kept outside the organization. Don’t bring your personal life to the company. They are only interested in your professional life. You come and do your work, that’s it. Keep it simple. The company tells us to be professional: “You may have your girl friend working with you. But in the workplace, she is only your colleague.” I deserved to be thrown out if I kiss her on the floor.

Rules and instructions laid down by the company were to be strictly followed. Agents saw nothing wrong in poor performers being told to leave, even after several opportunities were provided for improvement in performance. Agents were unsympathetic to colleagues who “misused” the place and did not give high performance. A professional agent enjoys the job and performs it seriously. He or she sets high standards and has an urge to excel such that he or she could perform on calls even in his or her sleep. The appeal to professionalism egged agents to make a difference. They were urged to prove to the West, that the services that they provide were better than those provided in their own country, especially when the 2004 U.S. presidential elections threatened the very concept of outsourcing.

The Primacy of the Customer The notion of the customer is now fundamental to current management paradigms as a means of analyzing and defining work performance and work relations. To compete successfully against competitor suppliers, and to achieve adequate profit margins, organizations must be able to satisfy customers. In the case of service industries with significant


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employee–customer interaction, customers are made to function in the role of management. In this sector, customer satisfaction is now defined as critical to competitive success because of its importance in achieving high levels of customer retention. Employees are urged to express concern to customers, make their voices warm and friendly, and prevent the expression of frustration and impatience. Companies even monitor employee interactions with customers and reward individuals who put their personal feelings aside (Du Gay & Salaman, 1992). Emotional labor, then, is a form of organizational control of the heart (Van Maanen & Kunda, 1989) through which individuals are welded to managerial interests. This was very true of agents working in inbound call centers who believed that they needed to smile on calls because the customer could hear their smiles and sense their moods. This indoctrination seemed to suggest that excitement or frowns were transmitted through a remote sensing device to customers. It was mandatory to communicate to the customer that the agent was interested in and enthusiastic toward the person who was calling. The customer was king, and agents were there to serve the customer. They had to be polite and understand the customer and apologize, if required, even for mistakes for which they were not responsible. During the shift, the last call had to be as good as the first call. Customers were required to be kept happy so that they did not abandon the service provider for better service elsewhere. If required, the call could be escalated to the agent’s team leader or be transferred to another department, or the customer could be requested to call back. Ultimately, I have to understand his or her feelings. In customer care, if the customer is right, I am wrong. And slowly, we have to correct them. Why don’t you look at it this way? We give a small twist so that the customer comes around. At the end of the call, he is happy. It should be like that we need to be polite.

Agents dealing with inbound calls had to make the customer feel that they were there to help them and meet their needs. They were required to pamper the customer’s ego. Customers needed to be treated like family members or like children who had to be given a patient hearing and be consoled when in need. Evoking a negative response was best avoided. Irate customers were to be handled tactfully rather than being brash or rude with them. Enraged customers needed to be treated with patience and understanding because it was easier retaining the current customer base than expanding it. Agents were required to understand that the customers had approached them with a problem that they themselves (customers) were incapable of resolving. It was necessary to keep in mind that an irate customer could have been waiting in the call queue for several hours or could be angry with the service or the product sold. Very often agents believed that the customer fumed because of their irresponsible behavior or poor service delivery. In short, they were required to put themselves in the customers’ shoes. Agents had been trained to control their emotions and think of the abuse as not being directed toward them but at the company. Yelling from an irate customers need not be taken personally. This enabled them to handle the very next call with equal attention. When they were on a call, they were required to concentrate on that call rather than think of the previous call or anything else that had unsettled them. They also learned to distinguish a rude customer who had a genuine problem and a customer who had decided to be rude come what may. Interacting with an abusive or irate customer was seen as being an integral part



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of the agent’s job at a call center. Agents who could, at the end of the call, hold their cool were rated high on performance. First thing you don’t take it personally. If somebody is shouting, he is not going to bite your head off. Most important thing is you are not going to see that person face to face. There is no eye contact, nothing, so you need not be scared. That’s how I handled it.

Agents unable to perform because of personal problems were expected to share their problems with their colleagues or superiors so that they could be resolved or overcome to display high energy levels on calls. Employees were expected to put their personal problems aside and focus on performance. Being professional meant being attentive to what the customer had to say while setting their own problems aside. Personal issues were required to be sorted only after office hours. Your personal and professional self has to be detached. Only when you are detached, you are able to do well. You go to the office with your problems in your head, obviously you are not making a good day. In the very first place, you should keep aside your emotions. Emotions don’t play a part here. So it’s only collections you are coming for. No emotions on the floor. And even if you have emotions, before coming to the floor, you have to leave it. You have had a fight with your dad or mom, you have to keep it outside and enter the floor.

Emotions were to be set aside as soon as one left home so that justice could be done to the job especially because the company paid handsome salaries. Customer tirades were to be handled with composure and in a detached manner. Customers were required to be given definite answers to their questions. When you come to call centers, you become professional. You forget about your emotions and everything. We don’t think even what we did in the last call.

Racial overtones of callers were also required to be handled professionally. They felt helpless and disappointed when they were screamed at because of the loss of jobs in the West. At their level, they could only apologize, while maintaining focus on the customer’s actual problem and attempting to solve it. I worked for, a U.S. project. The American customers are very rude, they don’t like speaking to Indians. The moment they come to know that they are speaking to an Indian, they will bang the phone. That irritates. At times we have people who abuse us. They are not happy about outsourcing and complain that we have taken their jobs. You can’t do anything about it.

However, not all customers were racist. There were customers who were happy with their service and believed that Indian agents were better than those in the West. They appreciated their diction and pronunciation. Although customers’ abuse was to be tolerated, an agent abusing the customer was considered unpardonable and was dealt with through dismissal. In the agents’ view, this punishment was acceptable. Agents stated that using abusive language could affect the process


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and the company, and a person indulging in this behavior should be severely punished. Agents judged hanging up on the customer as indefensible. One guy in Company Y told a customer, “Stupid Americans.” The customer called up the head of Company X in the U.S. and complained. The client picked up this call, and reported it to the operations manager who said, “Take him off calls, kick him out of the company.” The way you talk is very important. No profanity. No matter what the customer says, he may curse you, get very personal with you. You have to keep your cool and it is a part of your job. That guy may be frustrated, he had a bad day, whatever. Americans, Europeans, whatever they talk like this. If you retaliate, you use profanity to them, the company could be sued, and you could be thrown out.

Similarly, outbound agents were told that the customers got calls from several telemarketing firms in a day, and it was unfortunate that their call put off the customers. They observed that unsolicited calls to customers were an invasion of their privacy. Agents believed that they would have done the same if they were customers who received several calls in a day. Some respondents used their own experiences to understand the customers’ sentiments. I got a Hutch prepaid connection. They call me up saying that I could move to a postpaid connection without paying any deposit. I have decided that I do not want postpaid connection, but everyday I receive calls and I have to tell them that I don’t want that, please. They probably have a database and they keep dialing.

Outbound agents acquired skills that helped them to decipher the mood of the customer before they attempted to pitch for a sale. Being unable to see the customer physically put them at a disadvantage when proposing a sale. They did not mind being flirted with or being screamed at by the customers if they could strike a deal. Some customers who had no time to go to the market were happy to receive information and had a positive response to telemarketing.

The Dichotomous Self Call centers in India have taken customer service to the level of a fetish with their appeal to professionalism. Mirchandani (2003) refers to it as locational masking where workers in Indian call centers are trained to avoid answering questions from customers about their location. Nondisclosure agreements with their clients require them to develop protocols through which their location in India is not revealed to customers. Our respondents stated that some organizations allowed agents to reveal their identity and the place from which they were calling. Others wanted the agents to keep their identities a secret and were instructed to reveal their identity only when they were forced to do so or when the customer inquiries narrowed down to the specific place from where they were calling. Agents tried to mislead customers about their location or divulged only the bare minimum. For instance, they were trained to say that they were headquartered in the United States or United Kingdom or any other country as



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the case would be. When quizzed further, they either refused to disclose any more information about their location citing security reasons, or they would mention that they were located in Asia. Only if the customer persisted would they give in or allow the customer to hang up. Agents were not only provided with technical updates but were also updated on weather in a particular place so that it was difficult for the customer to identify the location of the agent if they quizzed about the weather. This suited agents as they overcame the tension of customers refusing to speak to them on the grounds that they were Indians who were competing with them for jobs. They don’t want to speak to an Indian. They will ask, “Where are you located?” We tell them that our head office is at Texas. They insist “No, I asked you where you are located?” We then tell them, “Sorry due to security reasons, we cannot disclose.” They then say, “What the crap are you saying? Why should I disclose my personal details to a terrorist country?” They enquire whether we are located in India or Pakistan and compel us to disclose our location. When we say we are in India, they disconnect the call.

Agents in call centers were trained in U.S., U.K., and Australian history, geography, and culture. Some call centers are adorned with popular icons from these countries to give a foreign culture feel to the office environment. The ambience was tailored to be colorful and lively for the young. Employees were also exposed to the way of life in these countries so that they were not taken aback by the differences in value systems. Understanding of culture provided agents with a perspective on customers’ needs and the types of responses that customers expected. We are calling Australia, so we have to act like Australians. During training, they gave us knowledge about Australia, what happens there and what people like there. They like a lot of sports.

A further camouflage adopted was the use of pseudonyms. Agents either chose pseudonyms from a list of names given to them, or they themselves chose the first names of famous personalities such as those of movie or rock stars. Some of them also chose names that were clear to hear and easy to pronounce. Others chose names that started with alphabets in their original name so that it was easier for them to remember. Some agents were initially upset to change their names but soon rationalized. They stated that when North Indians found it difficult to pronounce South Indians names’ then it was quite possible that Westerners would fail to pronounce their names. For them, it was like acting or being an actor for those many hours. Agents saw it as a part of the job requirement enabling them to pretend to be American, British, or Australian for the customers’ comfort. In fact, they had no choice in most cases and believed that because they were being paid for it, they might as well accept it. Everybody wears the mask. If you are a theater artist, you wear a mask of that character, but not in reality. You change your identity for someone else or some other requirement. You won’t do it, willingly. But if you are asked for a purpose, you will do it. Actors in person are very good but on the screen they take on the role of villains. Wearing mask is a part of your life. If you go for an interview, you wear mask—you will be professional, friendly, and obedient. If you go out with your girlfriend, you are something else.


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Taking on anglicized pseudonyms was also accepted by participants as this reduced the average handling time per call and improved their performance. It was easier for customers to understand and pronounce their names, and the agents were not required to spell out each and every syllable. Having Indian names was disadvantageous to both the company and agents as it increased the costs for the company and increased the average handling time for the agent. Moreover, it would be easier for them to get business and meet their targets given their assumed ethnic background. Agents stated that their pretentious anglicized pseudonym made the customers feel secure while revealing personal details. When customers identified them as Indians, they had to face the ignominy of callers hanging up. Having a pseudonym at least allowed them to get in a few words before the phone at the other end went down. If I tell them my real name they will not understand. They ask, “What’s that, what was the name?” And then you have to say it letter by letter. So if I say that my name is Christina, it is more convenient for them. That’s the main reason.

The adoption of pseudonyms served another purpose. It provided some kind of refuge from the backlash of callers who were against the whole concept of outsourcing and who often abused agents for snatching the jobs of those from the West. Pseudonyms helped the participants to overcome the trauma of racial abuse. Participants were trained to believe that it was not they but the pseudonym who was being abused. The customer blasted the pseudonym and not them. During training, they told us, “Sometimes customers will say, ‘Who the hell is Christina.’ We have to think that they are scolding Christina not Madhuri.” So we take it in that sense.

These explanations were similar to those of Mirchandani (2003), who declared that revealing that service work has been subcontracted to India may give rise to customer dissatisfaction for reasons ranging from racism and ignorance toward Indians, concern about local jobs, and assumptions about exploitative transnational corporate practices. Accepting the need for the use of a pseudonym was considered to be part of being professional. The assumed name was meant to be used only during office hours. After office hours, they would revert to their original names. In fact, agents claimed, in some instances their office colleagues did not know their original names. Others were happy to be identified by their pseudonyms even outside office hours. They had even changed their e-mail addresses to the pseudonym to enable communication with customers who knew them by the anglicized name. Regardless of the group to which agents belonged, all of them denied that changing their name amounted to changing their identity; for them, it was a mere job requirement. In my office most of the guys don’t know my real name. We call each other by the pseudonym. So most of us forget our original names. Bruce is my professional name. When they call me that, I feel I am a professional, a telemarketer working in an international company, dealing with international guys. But my real name will be my name forever.

However, pseudonyms were on their way out as more and more U.S. customers realized that calls were being diverted to India. Customers also knew that people changed their



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name and were not keen on knowing their original name. They were interested in the service rather than the name; therefore, a slip in using the wrong name was easily covered up. For every 30 calls, I mistakenly use my original name on at least 3 calls. I say Har . . . when I realize that I am making a mistake. I immediately stop and apologize to the customer and use my pseudonym. They generally ignore the error because they want solutions to their problems. They do not bothered about my name. My name would not change the capability of my work. Name is nothing. It’s only you.

Others doubted whether it was possible to pretend to be in the neighborhood by just acquiring a pseudonym. It was therefore important to have a neutral accent, minimizing the mother tongue influence. Employees were required to neutralize their accents, which meant reducing their mother tongue influence and being comprehensible to the customers for the sake of quality. They were shown movies, such as My Fair Lady, that exemplify spoken English and movies similar to Bend it Like Beckham that contrast the way Indians speak English to the way the British speak English. Besides this, The History, National Geographic, BBC, and Discovery Channels were used to help agents brush up their spoken English skills. Mirchandani (2003) refers to this phenomena as language imperialism. In most of the call centers, they ask you to use neutral accent so customers think that we are in the country to which we make the call. We you have to disguise and dodge the question, “Where you are calling from?”

The management wanted them to sound American because it helped the customer to understand them better. They put on the accent during the call and put it aside to crack jokes with their colleagues off the call. Those who could master the accent did not face embarrassing questions of mother tongue influence or being of Indian origin. However, it was difficult to acquire a new accent. Agents tried their best to neutralize their accent so that the customers understood them, but it was impossible to change their accent. Not being able to get across to customers made the agents anxious. Yes it was difficult for me because I am from Kerala. There are certain kind of words that we have to pronounce in their way. Here usually we say computer, but in U.K. they say compuutter. They will stress t. Initially, the customer did not understand a single word. If I were in the customer’s position and could not understand what the agent told me, why should I buy the product? Just bang the phone.

The employees were not allowed to speak in any other language besides English to the customer even though they believed that having a common ethnicity with a customer, especially nonresident Indians, would help in building a rapport and sale of the product. In case the customer did not understand English, the agent could explain things in any Indian language, but reconfirmation had to be in English. Agents agreed with this policy as the use of ethnic language would result in the differentiation of service and unequal treatment of customers. For the purpose of quality and standardization, using one’s local language could not be allowed. The use of a common language helped in standardization and enabled the monitoring of quality and abusive wrangles that would be difficult to track given the number of


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Indian languages. In case the organization required to cater to a clientele speaking a different language, a separate department was required to be set up to handle such customers. Suppose you are allowed to speak in a regional language and you start abusing the customer, the customer in turn abuses you and you indulge in dirty language, anything of that kind; how would the client or quality manager monitoring you understand. Right? Suppose if we have people conversing in Tamil or Malayalam or Kannada, wherein the person who is barging the call has no clue of the language; how exactly is he going to understand what is going on? Would he be able to find out whether they are talking about the product or are they talking about their wives and children, right? So this is the reason why there needs to be a standardization in the use of language. Suppose you want to help customers speaking a certain language; you have to have a different department for that, like we have certain companies wherein they have a separate group or separate department for people speaking Spanish, German, and things like that.

Monitoring and Surveillance: Toward Individual and Organizational Advantage The parameters used to judge a call were those mentioned in the service-level agreement. The agents were marked on phone etiquette, average handling time, adherence to the script, documentation, knowledge of the process and product, display of cordiality or warmth, clarity in the message transmitted, fluency in the English language, mother tongue influence, errors in speaking, pacification of irate customers, opening and closing, apologies, and other parameters specified by the client. They were also required to take notes of updates. The breaks were monitored, and insufficient login hours on outbound calls required working on holidays. Monitoring was essential to decide on the continuation of the services of employees. Inability to perform resulted in the employee being sent for retraining, which essentially meant notice before dismissal. Monitoring took place in several ways and from anywhere. The team leaders and operation managers were always there to overlook the operations and keep an eye on the agents. Calls were barged by the team leader, by quality control, or by the client. Clients also called in the guise of customers to check on the performance of the agents and send feedback to the managers about the agents’ performance. All calls were also recorded and later randomly picked for scrutiny to ensure that the quality parameters were met. The best calls were later played for the agents to emulate, and their own poor calls were used to demonstrate their errors, which in the future were required to be checked. This meant that agents had to be good on all the calls. Both remote barging and side jacking made agents conscious and tense, hampering customer satisfaction instead of enhancing it. They felt someone was constantly watching them. Once, I was talking to a customer, suddenly one of the quality people barged my call. They try and tell you what you have to say and what not. So whatever knowledge you have about the product or skills you have, all goes down. You don’t know what to do at that point of time. I was concentrating more on the person who was barging rather than my customer. I couldn’t perform. Only when you are free, you can do your job.



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Initially, participants did get upset and were stressed out when they realized that their calls were being barged, but once they got accustomed to barging, it did not really bother them except for making them conscious. Even though call monitoring made them nervous, they accepted monitoring. For them, clients had invested enormous amounts in call centers in India, and it was natural for them to expect returns on their investment and monitor calls. Through their performance they wanted to sell Bangalore as a destination for ITES-BPO organizations. Customer satisfaction was also related to them keeping their business and their jobs. There were instances when the projects were transferred back to the parent country because agents did not perform responsibly. Consequently, controlling for quality was seen as an important function. I think clients come to India to cut down on their costs. If people in India don’t give them quality and if their customers are unhappy, the process will shift back. They enforce strict laws and quality parameters on agents because they are the first ones to be blamed by the customers.

Agents believed it was the job of the managers to monitor, whereas it was their job to perform. Agents agreed that they could not be themselves on calls, but once in a while it was good to put them under pressure, so that higher performance could be extracted. Agents admitted that they were forced to be polite to the customers because the calls were monitored and could affect them negatively. Moreover, not being monitored went against the interest of the agents themselves, as they would tend to be slack on quality, depriving them of their incentives in case an anomaly in their performance was detected. The agents emphasized that monitoring was necessary to satisfy customers and that absence of monitoring would lead to poor service quality, which would result in repatriation of the process and loss of jobs. Some had worked for organizations where calls were not monitored and agents did not perform. Agents in these companies screamed at the customer, resulting in the loss of the process. The agent do not lose anything if the call is monitored. Indirectly, he is going to benefit from that because he will improve himself. If the call is not monitored, he might not take the call properly, might skip one step. It’s a loss for him because he won’t get incentives.

Agents accepted monitoring because it made possible to distinguish between good performers and average ones. Monitoring made comparison of individual performance possible. Monitoring also prevented shirking. Employees were keen on attaining the numbers and believed that the numbers were rational and achievable for those who worked hard and with dedication and had that drive to move up the organization. They had to perform at their best at all times to maximize their performance scores because customers always rated them one notch below their actual performance. If a customer is happy with you, if you think that you have done a great job, we would say “good.” If you think that you have done a good job, then the customer would say “average.” If you think that you have done an average job, we would say “OK,” “bad,” things like that. Whatever we interpret as, they will think a step below. That’s how they would rate us. That’s the reason we need to make sure that we keep our best, so that if not great, it should be at least good. That makes a lot of difference.


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Agents were convinced that lack of monitoring would lead to frivolousness and playfulness because youngsters were employed in call centers. Enthusiasm and effort would be absent if not monitored. Recording of calls ensured that agents in outbound call centers do not bluff or provide wrong information or make false promises to fulfill their sales targets or make a few extra bucks. The company required to protect itself against such wrongs as it could be sued by its customers. If you are selling a credit card and if the interest charged by your company on the credit card sold was 8%, there are agents who tell the customer that they can make the interest rate 6%. It is a lie. They want to make a sale by lying to the customer. Once the customer gets the card, he goes and uses it expecting to be charged only 6% interest; when he gets the statement, he sees that he has to pay 8%. Then he sues the company. You are not supposed to do that.

Participants viewed barging as being necessary to provide feedback to understand the shortcomings and overcome deficiencies. They saw in it an opportunity to improve and learn from those who had a sound knowledge about the process. Being able to handle the stress of barging prepared them to handle a bigger challenge of irate customers, and this also meant a boost in confidence levels and better performance. There is certainly going to be stress and pressure if someone is directly side jacking you, but if you are not ready for these things, then how will you handle irate customers? How would you handle the pressure if you don’t know how to react to these situations? Irate customers are definitely more stressful than barging. Barging definitely helps the agent to improve his confidence level. Once your confidence is up, you can do anything you can converse, you can take calls, achieve targets, and so on. Monitoring reduces leniency and makes you professional. You just can’t take it very easy or try to act smart on calls. One has to have fun and at the same time be a professional.

Feedback pertained to exuding higher levels of energy, providing better alternatives to the answers that agents gave, correcting accents, speed of speech, and so on. Feedback had no negative connotation attached to it but was seen as being supportive of the agent. Working on the feedback provided the confidence to deal with any situation, the ultimate aim being to provide clients with the best quality of customer care, to keep customers happy and satisfied. This would help the company to understand where agents were lacking and what kind of coaching was required. When you talk to a customer, they record the call and later on they will try to identify where we have gone wrong. On a particular call, the customer might want to know more about the product, so in our eagerness to explain the features of the product we may make mistakes or talk about the climate, which is not in keeping with the customers conditions. That’s why they record the calls and play it to us later, in the process pinpointing our mistakes, warning us to never repeat them. That’s how you can improve. There is a quality management who record and hear your calls and give feedback. Sometimes while on the call, they will cut it and talk to you over the phone itself, saying this is the mistake you made, otherwise you would have got the sale.



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Finally, monitoring was also accepted because agents were paid handsomely. People with no experience not only found jobs in the industry but now got salaries that were at least 4 to 5 times the salary available in an alternative industry. A few years ago fresh graduates had nothing to look forward to. Besides this, agents also saw growth opportunities in the industry. They believed that they could become team leaders or move into managerial positions within a year of joining a call center. But again you know, something like this, probably 5 years ago, when graduates used to come out of college, what was there? Nothing. People get Rs 2,000 to 3,000 a month. Today, an ITES professional, he will be earning not less than 10,000 a month. It’s a big amount, and especially for people as young as 22 and 23 years of age.

The Privileges of Professionalism Artifacts of the organization, typically associated with high status, supported the notion of professionalism, strengthening agents’ identification and compliance. The infrastructure was a case in point. Keeping with international standards, the offices were modern, meaning good looking and well furnished, unlike government offices, which had cramped up space and a heap of files. The agents considered themselves educated and professional and, unlike their government counterparts, able to take stress and pressures. Working out of such buildings gave them a sense of being valued—an asset to the company. The locality at which the company was situated, the exteriors, and interiors all added to the sense of being professional. Not only were these centralized to-and-fro pick up and drop off facilities, but call centers also had reasonably priced cafeterias with nutrition experts, recreation rooms with bean bags, computers with Internet access, music systems, televisions, carrom boards, table tennis equipment, and, at times, badminton courts along with a gym. The atmosphere in the call center was informal but professional. On the other hand, they surmised that government offices were hierarchy based and were housed in ramshackle buildings, as compared to the bright, air-conditioned offices from which they worked. Taking on anglicized names also made them feel that they were American, English, or Australian, who were highly professionalized as compared to Indians. Everybody was called by their first name, with no distinction made in terms of the furniture provided to people at different levels. The agents were open and frank with each other. They did not see the need to form unions. They were indebted to the customers for providing them with jobs. They were there to meet the clients’ requirements and not to form unions. People working in call centers dressed well to meet clients’ expectations and were dignified, confident, and responsible for handling several thousand dollars per day. Agents had developed a confidence to speak to foreigners, as compared to other Indians not working in call centers. All in all, they considered their jobs to be high status and themselves to be professional. A government office is a place where papers are piled up, people sitting there aaram se [leisurely]; you need to pass some kind of bill in order to get your work done, people are so relaxed, and there is nothing like a professional environment. In contrast, view the people in a modern, good-looking office that looks so professional, so dignified, so clean, so prominent, automatically even your work sense changes. These buildings actually imbibe a professional attitude, that’s what I believe. Here an agent to a manager, we all sit in the same kind of chairs,


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although some sit in cubicles and cabins. All of us are not managers or TLs, but we are professionals, we call each other by names, nobody calls madam or sir here. People believe that in call centers, people can dress as they want, but if you walk into a call center, you will find this is not true. We have a formal dress code from Monday to Friday, and on Sunday we have casuals. It’s a lot more professional environment. Strictly, no sleeveless tops are allowed on the floor. If you have worn that, you will be sent home to change that and come back. We have a well groomed hairstyle; everything is dignified because at the end of the day, you are a professional. And these well-designed buildings give you a feeling that you are working in a very dignified organization wherein everything is spic and span, everything is disciplined, and that’s why you are like a professional. All of us have the feeling to live the way we are in our jobs because this gives us a professional attitude. Even if you look at our pantry cleaners and cafeteria boys, they are so well dressed, they are so professional.

Professionalism Contested This appeal to professionalism or manipulation of the subjectivity combined with techno-bureaucratic monitoring in call centers is often termed totalizing. Schwartz (1987) states that today’s organizations aim for total control over their employees, their hearts and minds (i.e., their emotions and their ways of thinking), and their bodies (the physical space that they occupy, their physical appearance, facial expressions, and bodily movements). These pervasive controls colonize the individual from within rather than from above or from outside, suggesting that today’s controls are more invasive, pervasive, and insidious than were those of earlier eras. This type of control as is seen as totalizing to denote the weakening of alternative allegiances, such as those owed to professional and occupational bodies, trade unions, or social classes, and the suppression of overt displays of resistance and opposition. However, our data reveal that organizations were far from achieving totalizing control. The first time agents received calls from irate customers, they would be upset, and some of them even cried, but once they got use to it, they would put it on mute and let the customer scream while they enjoyed or chatted with their friends. First time when I listened to bad words, I was very tense. I didn’t take calls properly. Then we get used to that and we will say, fine, no problem. We will be cool. If we are so irritated, we will transfer the call to TL or put it on mute. We will be abusing the customer, but he won’t hear. At the same time, the customer will continue scolding, thinking that we are listening him. It is so common. We can’t help it. if the customer is shouting and still if the agent tells him, “Thank you, I am sorry,” he will be given high marks for that. That is a nice thing.

They were able to guess when they were being barged. They were even able to discern remote barging because they heard an echo or a beep. The agents were able to decipher when their calls were being monitored and accordingly took care of performance. In their words, they played the “game” once they got a hang of it. Every month, our shift changes. So in the first week, I will check. Which are the days my calls get monitored. In the monitoring sheet it will be there. This call is monitored, by this person, on this day, everything will be there. For different teams, different days, calls get monitored.



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First week, I will make a note. Second week, I will see for the same. Till now, it is the same, Monday, or maximum Tuesday. Last month, we used to get monitored every Monday. So I knew that. So that day, I will be very alert on my job. Mondays I will be perfect, Fridays I will be a bit slack. If it is on Monday, I will give three options. Then they will ask questions, subquestions, when I give answer for that, again they will ask questions, it goes on. I will not follow the entire process on Friday. If a call comes on Friday, I will give only one option. I will see what is the payment and straight away give $30, and say, any time you can sent an extra payment anytime you want. My talk time is reduced, the customer is happy. So if we have a basic idea of what is happening, you can play the game.

In some companies the mangers themselves told the agents that they would be barged by the clients so that agents performed and business was not lost. Agents used various techniques to bypass the call because of exhaustion or to enjoy a conversation with friends or to finish entering the data from the previous call. Team members, are all good friends. We will be talking about a good topic. In the midst of the topic, some call comes. By the time I finish the call, the topic will be over and I miss the conversation, so we play some tricks. If we disconnect the call, what happens is that if the call gets monitored, it becomes a serious issue. Better than that, do a double click, you are now the last person in the queue.

On outbound calls, because there was no parameter of average handling time, they took there own sweet time by talking to the customers’ children and listening to the customers’ problems. We put up an answering machine and take our own sweet time. Sometimes if the kids pick up the phone, we go on talking. They are lovely.

Agents handling collections had an upper hand in dealing with customers, as compared to when they were sold products. Here you will get some advantage where you can tell the customer that you are a defaulter. There it is a different scenario wherein we have to get them into a happy, normal mood, he feels better and buy the product. There we have to listen to them. Here they have to listen to us.

Conclusion It is often assumed that organizational control is achieved by designing and applying appropriate structures, procedures, measures, and targets and that resistance to these mechanisms is symptomatic of “poor design” or “poor management” that can be rectified by restructuring and/or training or staff replacement (Alvesson & Wilmott, 2002). However, it is gradually recognized that controls of today’s corporation are infinitely subtler and going far deeper than were those figured by Elton Mayo and his coworkers in the 1920s, reaching to the very core of each employee’s sense of selfhood and identity, defining his or her very being (Gabriel, 1999). Organizational control may be accomplished through the self-positioning of employees within managerially inspired discourses about work and organization, with which they may become more or less identified and committed (Alvesson & Wilmott, 2002). The


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appeal to professionalism is one such new software of control that invites employees to reimagine themselves (Fournier, 1999). Our study illustrates this position in relation to call center employees in Bangalore. The employees in the call centers were not only called professionals within the organization but also demonstrated internalization of the concept, demanding that they be referred to as professionals rather than workers. Moreover, they strongly identified with the management discourse and imbibed a set of values espoused by the management through training and induction and through the exhortation of the reward-punishment system. They defined themselves in terms of corporate ideology as people who had the desire to satisfy customers, put aside personal problems, concentrated on service, accepted stringent monitoring and shift timings, were able to withstand strains and pressures of work, and were receptive to the idea of taking on another identity in the interest of the organization and the customer. Agents were apathetic to the dismissal of colleagues who were poor performers or who abused customers. Their modern worksites invoked a feeling of being valued and acquiring a sense of status. These professionals tried to distinguish themselves from government employees, who they considered unprofessional and inefficient. However, the appeal to professionalism requires to be qualified. Fournier (1999) states that professionalism may not always be indexed to enterprise and may not always govern through technologies of the self; employees are more likely to be coerced into appropriate conduct by the threat and insecurity characteristic of the labor market in which they find themselves. The same can be noticed in the context of call center agents in Bangalore. They were anxious about the impact of the 2004 U.S. presidential elections on outsourcing, were sensitive to the unemployment situation in India, and were apprehensive about the process being transferred back to the parent company because of poor performance. Besides this, racist callers forced them to prove that they were better than the agents in those countries. The call center agents were only too keen to keep their jobs as the salaries were attractive. Thus, instead of there being a discontinuity, cultural and ideological control set the stage for the effectiveness of technical control. This enables us to go beyond Fournier’s (1999) formulation that the notion of professionalism as a disciplinary mechanism is not only being extended to new occupational domains where employees’ behavior cannot be regulated through direct control but also in organizations where employees are closely monitored, such as in call centers. Socioideological and technocratic forms of control build on and feed each other. The happy alignment among customers, company, and professional employees does not go uncontested. Agents worked out ways and means of resistance and overcoming customer outrage, making the disciplinary logic of professionalism, combined with technobureaucratic control, an imperfect form of government. However, this did not necessarily mean abandoning the notion of professionalism.

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Premilla D’Cruz is employed by the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India, and may be contacted at [email protected]. Ernesto Noronha is employed by the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India, and may be contacted at [email protected].


Social Science Computer Review - CiteSeerX

Social Science Computer Review - CiteSeerX

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