Call Center Essay ⋆ Business Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Call centers are used by all types of business entities ranging from small telemarketers to large multinational corporations (MNCs) in order to promote, sell, or service their product offerings. The advent of globalization and the intensification of competition worldwide have prompted the necessity to deliver services and respond to inquiries from customers, suppliers, shareholders, and other stakeholders effectively and quickly. Call centers cater to such needs and help firms to promote their products and services from a distance with efficiency, flexibility, and speed. As a consequence, the global call center industry has been growing worldwide at a record pace since the late 1980s. In addition to increased efficiency, the optimization of customers’ and shareholders’ value is the major motivation behind the worldwide growth of the industry which, to a certain extent, could be seen in the context of cost reductive “global Fordism” strategies.

Typically, a call center can manage a considerable volume of calls simultaneously by screening and forwarding them to the relevant customer service representatives capable of handling the required information. Call center employees receive inbound or make outbound telephone calls using information and communications technologies (ICT). Automatic call distribution (ACD) and remote electronic access (REA) supported by high-speed, high-bandwidth telecommunications are instrumental in managing operations.

As an industry that emphasizes knowledge and ecommerce as the way to do business, the call center does not fit the traditional staged model of internationalization. The traditional model considers a systematic progression through four different stages of firm internationalization beginning with limited exporting activities and culminating with the establishment of foreign production/manufacturing facilities. Indeed, it is an industry that could easily be considered “born global.”

Call centers may serve multiple purposes. In addition to business-to-customer (B2C) interactions, call centers may promote business-to-business (B2B) communication, and are a tool to maintain an ongoing relationship with other stakeholders, including suppliers and distributors. Public-sector organizations have started using call centers as a means to improve service delivery to citizens and businesses (G2C and G2B). Call center activities support Dunning’s concepts of “alliance capitalism” and the “knowledge economy” somewhat, as call centers enhance the ability of firms to access customers, suppliers, competitors, and collaborators from a distance, reducing the need for face-to-face communication and spatial transactions.

There is a preference among many MNCs to outsource call center operations to developing countries in order to optimize profit and minimize costs. It is argued that outsourced call centers offer significant savings that could jump to a remarkable 40 percent when outsourced to countries such as India, the Philippines, or South Africa.

However, operating costs in places like India are rising. In addition, many consider the jobs created in call centers in developing countries to be at the expense of similar jobs lost in the West. Such controversies are fuelling popular discontent and backlash in the West, resulting in the closure of many call center operations in developing countries. Moreover, some human rights activists consider call centers to have harsh work environments, where staff usually work long hours with poor pay and under strict guidelines and constant surveillance. Accordingly, some activists have dubbed them “electronic sweatshops.”

Bibliography:

James C. Abbott, Designing Effective Call Centers (Robert Houston Smith Pub., 2008);
H. Dunning, “Regions, Globalization and the Knowledge Economy: The Issues Stated,” in J. H. Dunning, ed., Regions, Globalization and the Knowledge-Based Economy (Oxford University Press, 2000);
Garson, The Electronic Sweatshop: How Computers Are Transforming the Office of the Future Into the Factory of the Past (Simon and Schuster, 1988);
Renee Paulet, “Location Matters: The Impact of Place on Call Centres,” Journal of Industrial Relations (v.50/2, 2008).

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