[asterisk-users] (Getting OT) Re: Call Center SoftPhone with Auto Answer

[Alex Balashov]

On Wed, 19 Sep 2007, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 18, 2007 at 08:12:36PM -0400, Alex Balashov wrote:

>> If you have to resort to such measures to get people to work for you
>> in a motivated fashion, you're doing something very, VERY wrong.
>
> Of course they are: they're telemarketing.

   Heh.

   I was not meaning to be uncompromisingly harsh in my response; 
pragmatism suggests that the nature of the work in most generic call
center environments (inherently mundane, unstimulating, largely a
blight of creativity) coupled with the generalisable qualities of the
labour pool typically available to such environments and in such
pay grades ... makes it very difficult to come away seeing such workers
as anything other than lazy, unmotivated schmucks, and furthermore,
makes it very difficult to apply some of the considerations of creative
freedom that we often spin in more cerebral and higher-order white collar
industries.

   It's easy to say, "Give them something purposeful that gives them a 
sense of personal pride and accomplishment," if you're, say, running a 
software company, but much more difficult if you're running a very 
pedestrian call center.

   But, still, you can't be Mussolini, whether in a call center or in a 
burger joint.  You have to create incentives for people to work for you
diligently that do not involve being at gunpoint somehow.  If nothing 
else, the moment a competitor comes along threatening to treat people
like something more slightly resembling people than in the fascist
conception, and your staff is gone.

   It is a difficult problem to solve, but it must be solved through
ingenuity, innovation, and a keen, perspicacious understanding of
industrial psychology and, most of all, a fundamental esteem for one's
fellow human beings.

-- Alex

--
Alex Balashov
Evariste Systems
Web    : http://www.evaristesys.com/
Tel    : +1-678-954-0670
Direct : +1-678-954-0671