Dignity and Power Relations Between Call-Center Companies and Clients

The empirical research presented in this chapter aimed to discuss the power relations between a call center company and its customers, in a Foucauldian perspective. The study emphasizes the management performed by the company, constituting customers in productive and docile customers. Speeches of dignity reside on two levels: claiming rights and attempting government. The claiming of rights includes the right to information about the status of orders, correct information, respectful treatment, the right to compliance with the time of delivery, and the right to have moments of life free of the company’s effect of power. Government attempts range from claiming compensations for financial, psychological, and social damages to interference on the company management. The most forceful refusal, however, is in retaliation of the company. Retaliation takes different forms, from reporting in newspapers, discouraging friends from consuming the company’s services, suing the company in court, and rupturing with the company. As a theoretical contribution, it addresses the organization’s search for control and regulation of the customer. As a practical contribution, it seeks to shed light on a relationship that affects the daily lives of customers, in a society of consumers that is permeated by uneven power relations and ownership of resources.