Scientific Management

Telebank plc’s telephone banking call centre at fordsal in the north of England, is one of the most secure banks. And with this security, came with great control. This building holds many telephone operator for 1100 customer calls each day. Not only that the telephone Information Communication Technology was good in handling calls, it is also productive and effective. However, controlling of the telephone operator create stress and pressure in their work.

How does the clerks experience this control ? Relating to scientific management, the control of the clerks to handle the overwhelming calls was productive and effective. However, with the quota on the calls per day in addition to evaluate and rewards for the numbers of calls they answer, many clerks rush with the call just to attend to the next call as fast as possible. This creates high pressure, fast- paced, target driven and endless repetitive work, and in return, poor customer service. In Scientific management, it is called time motion studies and man into machine. Although it is efficient and effective, incentive system is not a good system to begin with, and this, it creates competitive among workers and disregard responsibility to the job nature. (Maqbool, Zakariya, Paracha, 2011).

Although, all clerks have agreed to the target they must achieve in a single day, many clerks were unhappy, dissatisfied and feels meaningless working in endless repetitive job, answering calls every few minutes for the entire working day. Clerks mentioned that the pay were low in relation to the amount of pressure and stress in handling phone calls and explaining that even packing plastics toys into the box in some companies could get better pay.

The nature of the job as a telephone customer service clerk was to provide caring, understanding, patience, and proper service to customers. However, with the controlling of manpower from the ICT machines, many are bind down to timing rather than servicing, which is actually in opposition of customer service. After discussion, many clerks had concluded that they are not chasing target aimlessly but rather in the mind of helping and serving customer. Before the target been implemented, quality of customer service was better without pressure of having to answer a certain targeted phone call. The clerks valued themselves as an important role, great responsibility and a high status of been the bank clerk. However with the system the bank managed, clerks felt that the bank is denying the nature of the job, and taking them away from been useful and meaningful.

Reference:
Magbool, M. and Zakariya, A. and Paracha. A. N.(2011) A critique on Scientific Management, Interdisciplinary journal of contemporary research in business. 3(4), p. 844- 854.