Case: Phone Monkey or Agent With a Mission?

Phone Monkey. The Secret Diary of o Frustrated Call Centre Worker (Anonymous, 2012) screams out the aggravation that the anonymous British author felt while selling insurance over the phone. He wrote the book to try to find some meaning and purpose in his work experiences.

Apparently, he wasn't very successful in seeing his job as meaningful. The fact that he calls himself and his fellow call center workers Phone Monkeys shows how alienated he felt from his work. The contingent rewards were good: When he was hired, he was impressed with his opportunity to make big bucks on bonuses, The free coffee and tea was great also. But he and his colony of Phone Monkeys rarely felt any dedica¬tion to their jobs, their employer, their customers, or each other.

Although the Phone Monkeys were supposed to help retain disgruntled customers by offering discounts and persuasive explanations of policies, none of them put much effort into trying to retain customers. They could make more bonus money by quickly hanging up and moving on to the next cal!.

As the experienced call center worker told the author during his training (Anonymous, 2012, "Day One: location 73), 'We're all only here for the money, it's not a labor of love, and the next call could have a bonus attached to it: The Phone Monkeys referred to irate customers-about 10% of the people they talked to-as The Crazies' (2012, "Day Nine: location 714); admittedly, every business has some rude customers, but at 10% it seems like the company must not be doing enough to keep their customers happy. The company also had an incentive system that pitted the interests of the call center employees against the interests of the customers: The bigger the discounts the employees gave customers, the lower their own bonuses would be.

The Monkeys also lacked team spirit: They were constantly gossiping about each other and making fun of their coworkers' personal lives.

It's tempting to assume that call center work is simply a bad job-that the work itself is alienating and lacking in intrinsic meaning. But is this true?

The call center agents at United Services Automobile Association (USAA) also sell insurance, yet USAA is ranked as the 20th best company to work for (Moskowitz, 2012). J.D. Power and Associates also recognized USAA in 2011 for being a Customer Service Champion. The satisfied and dedicated workers at USAA helped it grow from a net worth of $13.1 billion in 2006 to $18.7 billion in 2010. Why are the employees so dedicated? It could be that they believe in the mission and values.

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