September 03, 2006: The Other Side of Another Coin

This morning I realized that yesterday's "CRM Society" article was unbalanced in (at least) one significant way: While I concentrated on the ways in which CRM technology was contributing to the objectification of customers, I neglected to give "equal time" to the fact that the technology also objectifies the vendor's work force, particularly those workers using the technology. Service is probably the best case in point. A call center operator who may sincerely want to engage with a customer is so constrained by a script that has to be used that psychological well-being all but demands blocking out event the slightest thought of a personalized interaction. Thus, a customer who is reduced to a feeling of mindless insignificance through an inadequate piece of technology arrives at that frame of mind through the activities of a worker who is also being reduced to a feeling of mindless insignificance through the obligation to use a tool whose inadequacies are blatantly obvious. Needless to say, users of other components of a CRM suite fare no better, nor do their customers much (most?) of the time.

Barbara Garson saw all of this coming almost twenty years ago. The subtitle of her book said it all: How Computers are Transforming the Office of the Future into the Factory of the Past. The factory of the past was operated according to Frederick Taylor's principles of "scientific management." Taylor was definitely not the first to treat workers as objects (as yesterday's reference to the slave trade makes clear); but he was the pioneer of turning that world-view into an approach to management that was as dehumanizing as slavery and then having the outlandish gall to label that approach "scientific!" Garson's thesis is that information technology had become the most powerful enabling instrument for Taylor's approach, and the technology was barely out of its infancy when she wrote her book! One can only wonder what she things about current conditions, particularly where CRM is involved. (For that matter I have to wonder how it is that Wikipedia has decided that she is best known for her scathing political satire, MACBIRD, mentioning her four books about the nature of work almost as an afterthought!)