Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables and Figure
- Contributors
- Editorial Statement
- Abbreviations
- 1 Going to a New Place
- PART I TIME
- 2 Time and Work
- 3 The Gender Agenda
- 4 Regulation and Deregulation in Australian Labour Law
- 5 Diversity and Change in Work and Employment Relations
- 6 Transactions in Time
- PART II SPACE
- PART III DISCOURSE
- COMMENTARY
- Index
6 - Transactions in Time
The Temporal Dimensions of Customer Service Work
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables and Figure
- Contributors
- Editorial Statement
- Abbreviations
- 1 Going to a New Place
- PART I TIME
- 2 Time and Work
- 3 The Gender Agenda
- 4 Regulation and Deregulation in Australian Labour Law
- 5 Diversity and Change in Work and Employment Relations
- 6 Transactions in Time
- PART II SPACE
- PART III DISCOURSE
- COMMENTARY
- Index
Summary
By the late 1990s, service industries had come to dominate economic activity in most OECD countries including the USA, France, Denmark and Belgium. In 2001 in Australia, services accounted for more than 70 per cent of economic activity and more than three-quarters ($419 billion) of the total output of the economy. Indeed service industries employed 7.4 million of the 9 million (or four out of five) people in paid employment in Australia in 2001 (McLachlan et al. 2002). While service work covers an increasingly diverse range of occupations, many service jobs involve daily interaction with customers. In these jobs, which Leidner (1993) has called interactive service work, the customer is not one step removed from the organisation but enters into the workplace through direct contact with employees. Customers bring their own expectations about what constitutes ‘good’ customer service and it is the role of customer service employees to deliver according to these expectations as well as those set by management. In recent years researchers from a broad range of disciplines have sought a better understanding of the nature of these three-way interactions. This chapter contributes to this growing body of literature by highlighting the temporal dimensions of customer service work.
In particular, this chapter outlines the way that contemporary retail banking organisations have, in part, used technological service options to limit the unpredictability and uncertainty of routine service exchanges.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Rethinking WorkTime, Space and Discourse, pp. 102 - 118Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
- 4
- Cited by