Flesh in voice: The no-touch embodiment of transnational customer service workers

Abstract

Telephone-based customer service work is often conceptualized as disembodied. Automatic dialing systems direct callers through menu-driven options, and eventually to a distant customer service worker. Interactions are scripted, and workers have little job discretion to deal with out-of-thebox customer requests. Yet, although the bodies of call center workers and their customers do not come into contact, this article considers whether their interactions are in fact disembodied. Based on interviews with transnational customer service workers in India, I argue that bodies matter in remote customer service interactions. Part of the job of a customer service worker is the transmission of bodies through voice. This involves making sense of how ideal workers are embodied in callers' eyes and using their voices to emulate these imagined ideal workers. I argue that exploring the embodiment of 'voice workers' extends analyses of embodiment to date, which have focused primarily on whole bodies in physical contact with others. The findings presented here highlight the importance of interpellation-specifically the work of 'reading bodies' which is a significant part of service work, especially work which crosses national borders. Bodies are 'read' based on social and historical contexts within which people are immersed and these contexts are influenced by social stratification, state policies, and colonial histories.While telephone-based customer service work is typically conceptualized as disembodied, images of customers talking on the phone and workers wearing headsets and sitting at computer

Invisible Bodies and Disembodied Voices? Identity Work, the Body and Embodiment in Transnational Service Work

“…. making sense of how ideal workers are embodied in callers' eyes and using their voices to emulate these imagined ideal workers (Mirchandani, , p. 909).While this vein of research is interesting, the focus is still on reading idealized bodies and incorporating these characteristics into the call agents' performance, rather than work on one's body as a target of discipline. In this sense, the connections between embodiment and identity work have not yet been sharply made.…”

“…. making sense of how ideal workers are embodied in callers' eyes and using their voices to emulate these imagined ideal workers (Mirchandani, , p. 909).…”

“…While visualization techniques have been identified in many studies (Nath, ; Raghuram, ) it has not been analysed as an embodied strategy. Mirchandani () comes close in her description of Indian call workers ‘reading bodies’ of the idealized westernized worker, but does not go far enough in considering this to be a bodily practice. I use the term ‘corporeal imaginaries’ to describe the embodied processes by which call centre workers visualize and enflesh the western client (and themselves) through the dual process of ‘enchantment’ and ‘othering’.…”

“…In order to enflesh the fading body in call centre research, this study seeks to examine a specific embodied practice of ‘identity work’ in which call agents adopt westernized identities to imply proximity to the western client base. While identity work has been mainly analysed as a form of aesthetic labour (Nath, ); emotional labour (Mirchandani, ) and impression management (Goffman, ), few studies have examined this form of work as embodied (but see Mirchandani, ). By focussing on the bodily aspects of identity work, especially in relation to work on one's own body, and imagining others' bodies, this article extends current thinking on identity work in call centres.…”

How Can We Define Mastery? Reflections on Learning, Embodiment and Professional Identity

“…348-364, Oct./Dec. 2015 www.anpad.org.br/bar people perform working practices together or in the same environment (Almeida & Flores-Pereira, 2013;Llewellyn & Hindmarsh, 2013;Mirchandani, 2015;Rosa & Brito, 2010;Styhre, 2004;Tuncer, 2015;Yakhlef, 2010), but again without any specific interest in how work itself is linked to a network of embodied processes that ultimately shape professional identities and vice-versa.…”