It seems that contact centre businesses have a complex about the work they provide. The leading contact centre businesses now promote an 'experience' of their company rather than promoting the work that is done. I think this is contributing to the problem.

How many other professions promote anything but the work? Does a hospital need to sell its potential staff on 'chill-out zones' or ambience or facilities? Of course not. Facilities, opportunities etc. all help, but they cannot be the reason for someone working at a company. For two main reasons:

1. A candidate who is sold on anything but the work is by default focused on anything but the work. Any business wants employees who want to do the job.

2. An employees experience in a contact centre is going to be predominantly that of doing the actual job, i.e. on the phones. Selling an 'experience' and not the work will lead to disillusion.

Now, call my crazy, but call centre work has all the ingredients to not only by enjoyable but also DESIRABLE. There is a misconception that call centre work is not meaningful, emotionally rewarding or stimulating... Nonsense! Call centre work is customer service, and customer service is human interaction, and since when was human interaction not meaningful? Not rewarding? Not stimulating?

I think the future of call centres will require tapping into the essence of customer service and that is simply harmonious and productive human interaction. There is nobody who doesn't enjoy this and there is no customer who will complain upon experiencing this.

There are ways forwards for call centres, but i think a new philosophy and a new direction are going to be required. No more elastoplasts over wounds, there needs to be a focus on the cause and the essence, and then i see no reason why call centres cannot stand tall as a respected source of employment.

You paint quite a one dimensional picture of recruitment, but the proposition you're putting forward addresses an important part of the message. Given leading employers' concentration in a dozen or so localities across the country, perhaps the practical issue is one of competing in a restricted labour pool and having to engage, also, with potential recruits who may not at that moment expect to find emotional rewards or stimuli through their work. There is no substitute for experience of the job as a whole. But it has the power to confirm the new employee's expectations or to modify them - either way.

Experience or perception needs to be differentiated when recruiting individiuals, or not in the case of some individuals. Experienced individuals will very much concentrate on 'what's in it for me' whilst inexperienced people may need persuading so as to address the general perception of the 'sweat shop'.
That said, you would have had to be living on another planet not to know what goes on in a call centre.
Therefore it is appropriate, I believe, to sell the benefits of the company, working environment, culture etc etc.

I'm not actually referring to recruitment at all. I am saying that there is the opportunity to tap into what is already present in all customer service agents and stimulate an enjoyment of the work. In this sense, providing the proper training is provided to stimulate the enjoyment, recruitment would become less of a focus, given that recruitment offers a very small window of insight into a persons character and there is no guarantee that their apaprent qualities will be maintained within the call centre environment. Instead, an enjoyment could be stimulated by utilising the working environment... transforming their view of the work they are doing.

I agree that more could be done to promote the benefits of call centre work. Valuable work and life skills can be learned or improved (listening, creating rapport, influencing, selling, service, teamwork, efficiency, accuracy, working to target etc) that many people can go on to use in whatever they choose to do if they leave call centres. That said, skilled team managers are usually needed to bring this to life.