Customer relationship management in call centers: The uneasy process of re(form)ing the subject through the ‘people-by-numbers’ approach

Real-time technology has the capability of symbolising both customers and call center representatives (and the moment of interaction), purely by/as numbers, or forms. The pinnacle of this data processing is customer relationship management (CRM), where the digitised data is assembled so as to reprod...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInformation and organization Vol. 18; no. 1; pp. 29 - 50
Main Authors Alferoff, Catrina, Knights, David
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Elsevier Ltd 2008
Elsevier Science Ltd
Subjects
Call centers
Customer relationship management
Data mining
Information technology
Real time
Studies
United States > US
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Summary:Real-time technology has the capability of symbolising both customers and call center representatives (and the moment of interaction), purely by/as numbers, or forms. The pinnacle of this data processing is customer relationship management (CRM), where the digitised data is assembled so as to reproduce a mimetic model of the customer. This could be seen as a metamyth ( Adams & Ingersoll, 1990) that, in its concealed appearance within corporate databases, seems to cuts loose from any critical inquiry. In this paper, we offer an embryonic form of such a critique through the analysis of a number of original call center case studies. It seeks to analyze the nature of abstraction at the heart of IT-based CRM practices, and the contradictions that such abstraction can foster.
Bibliography:SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 14
ISSN:1471-7727
1873-7919
DOI:10.1016/j.infoandorg.2007.10.002