It is taken for granted in call centres that advisers should be able to speak clearly and this ability is looked for during recruitment and selection. ‘Sounding right’ is a very important component of the image an organization wishes to transmit to callers:
In relation to customers’ aural aesthetic, the voice and accent of employees was important. In the hotel, the personnel manager was adamant: ‘We don’t want someone who spoke in a very gu ural manner.’ In the banks, again, one respondent claimed that having a ‘clear accent’ was an absolute essential.
So, because it is o en very difficult to change the way in which a person speaks (which is o en an important part of their personality and therefore is very difficult to change) people are frequently selected who already possess the language qualities required. It would appear that some employers are prioritizing aesthetic ‘sense knowledge’ over ‘intellectual knowledge’ and seek to recruit workers with ‘embodied capacities’ that they can ‘commodify’ and thus create a specific type of service experience.
It is argued that some employers select staff who already possess the qualities needed to work as advisers and just style and polish these surface features:
This, arguably, would be a more accurate description than ‘skilling’ of what goes on in many regimes of customer care, where there is little engagement with the underlying purposes and principles of verbal interaction, but rather an intense concern to manage what might be called its aesthetics.
Of course, where only styling happens, employees may not fully understand what they are doing nor be able to improve their performance without guidance. It is essential that training involves providing the conceptual understanding to make sense of what is happening. Without this, advisers may know what to do but don’t know why – it is the essential difference between training and education.
Traditionally, English grammar was based on Latin structures, which are not fully suited to explain the various grammatical forms that have developed over the centuries. These traditional grammars have now been partly replaced by descriptive grammars that illustrate structures with examples of language taken from everyday situations.
This approach to grammar, which recognizes that language is dynamic and cannot always be shoe-horned into a particular structure, is enlightening. Communicative competence is more than just understanding the grammatical rules: it is also about knowing when to use them. ‘There are rules of use without which the rules of grammar would be useless’.
Such a short-term styling approach by employers, where it occurs, is strongly discouraged. Instructing people from scratch about the nuances of language is difficult, and even linguistics specialists find it difficult to fully describe all the interacting aspects of language. So it is understandable that people with life experience, perhaps raising children, are actively sought because they o en have the innate language skills required for successful communication. But, if contact centres wish to raise their skills levels and raise the public’s perception then deeper knowledge and understanding have to be developed.
Scripts and prompts
Scripts, or prompt sheets, are commonly used in call centres because they allow a consistency of approach and maintain a level of quality that may not be the case if people are allowed to go in any direction they choose. However, the extent to which they are helpful depends very much on the circumstances, for example, a telephone directory enquiry is a brief transaction that only lasts a short period of time and needs standardized procedures. On the other hand, a call to an advice line may require much more flexibility, particularly if the caller is emotional.
If advisers are constrained too much then the spontaneity of conversational language is lost and monotony and boredom can set in. Normal everyday conversations tend to be relaxed and informal and it is these elements that many organizations try to replicate so that they can build a relationship with the customer. It is therefore a balancing act between allowing flexibility and ensuring consistency and quality of service.
Although scripts can be helpful they cannot fully anticipate the response of the caller. There is a grammar of consequences in which ‘Speakers are free to make any choices, but how their choices will be interpreted is not free’. Where there is an unanticipated response the strategy encouraged in many call centres is to repeat the question in the hope that a more suitable response is obtained. This sometimes works but the overall conclusion is that the customer should not and o en cannot be constrained by pre-judged questioning.
Where scripts are too tightly enforced they may inhibit the adviser, and this verbal straitjacket may then have repercussions for a caller requiring an individualized response. The scripts used by Lloyds Bank overseas call centre so annoyed customers that it abandoned them.
Some call centres do not require linguistic uniformity and allow a considerable amount of flexibility. At one centre that focused on technical telecommunication enquiries, there is little enforcement of protocols. It ‘hardly regulated employees’ communication strategies at all, nor did it record or systematically monitor calls (a manager told me he believed that would be “devastating for morale”)’.
So what can be learnt about the use of scripts? Essentially, scripts provide a guide for the adviser, and for probationers and novices they are an important tool that gives confidence and support, helping to improve the interaction. As advisers become more experienced they internalize the language structure, making it more fluent and natural, allowing them more scope to personalize their communication with the customer.
No comments:
Post a Comment