Clients: operationalising consensus, internalising discipline
Clients: operationalising consensus, internalising discipline
Chapter 5 considers the creation of client sovereignty within call centres, how it shapes the nature of the operator–client relationship and how it contributes to the overall specificity of call centre labour as a regime of disciplined agency. The client, as a figure of authority, shapes the way labour as a service is mobilised within the sector. To promote the everyday realisation of client sovereignty, firms engage in extensive marketing operations and ritualised collective gatherings with the purpose of creating what they designate the ‘transcendent client’. On the shop floor, the morally embedded nature of operator–client interactions mediates the conditions whereby the ideology of the ‘customer as king' comes to be accommodated or challenged by operators. One particular form of contestation that takes place on the shop floor is the construction of the ‘stupid client’ through gossip, humour and rumours.
Keywords: client sovereignty, marketing, shop floor, gossip, humour
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