Abstract
Woydack draws on ethnographic observations and the meme of a new agent’s day at work to provide a unique, first of its kind “detailed behind the scenes look” at how a call center operates from recruitment to language management practices. In the process, she introduces the role of monitoring, the regulation of working hours and non-work related activities, and the place of data logging in a call agent’s responsibilities and managerial decision making. Woydack further explains why scripts and standardization practices are central to the running of the call center. The chapter includes a useful summary of why actual agents join a call center labor force and how they understand their work experiences.
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References
Woydack, Johanna. 2016. Superdiversity and a London Multilingual Call Centre. In Engaging Superdiversity: Recombining Spaces, Times and Language Practices, ed. Karel Arnaut, Martha Sif Karrebaek, Massimiliano Spotti, and Jan Blommaert, vol. 7, 220–251. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Woydack, Johanna, and Ben Rampton. 2016. Text Trajectories in a Multilingual Call Centre: The Linguistic Ethnography of a Calling Script. Language in Society 45 (05): 709–732.
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Woydack, J. (2019). Getting to Know CallCentral: A First Encounter. In: Linguistic Ethnography of a Multilingual Call Center. Communicating in Professions and Organizations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93323-8_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93323-8_2
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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