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thus they have no control over it. Unlike the outbound agents whose work is the reverse in the sense that, they make the calls to their customers. This enables them plan their time and the team leaders are not strict as to how they plan their job, but still keep a watchful eye and monitor ensure they make the calls and meet their targets.

Although the outbound agents had a more relaxed working condition, their job was still very tedious and demanding because since they were making the calls to the customers. Customers were seen to take advantage of the situation to resolve any issue they had instead of later calling the customer care service. Thus the outbound agents in most cases are seen to virtually execute both the outbound and inbound duties simultaneously with the same talk time limit. On the other hand, the outbound environment was very tense because the call just kept „pouring in? and the agents are given little or no time between calls to have a quite break. On one occasion, as mentioned by an agent when in an attempt to have a quick break after a stream of calls, she placed her system on a not ready status. Almost immediately, the supervisor worked up to her work station and asked her to get herself back on the ready status because of the volume of calls coming in. In general, it can be seen that due to the targets the call agents have to achieve in each shift and the constant surveillance of their supervisors all add up to the intense labour process found in the call centre. Agents in turn have found ways to 'beat' the system in an attempt to achieve the required targets. The two main ways agents attempt to achieve this is for the agent to:

Log in to the system and yet display the not ready status
Transferring calls to other agents
Drop calls.
However, this can be discovered when query reports are run of which they have no knowledge as to how data is collated or which calls are listened to when these queries are run. This suggests that there is a chance that the agents can get away with such behaviours depending on how often supervisors or management listen to their calls or check the system as regards the status of an agent.

The Performance Evaluation Scheme: the performance evaluation is done quarterly and is based on both quality (60%) and quantity (40%). Although the agents are quite aware of the criteria by which they are assessed on, they are not quite pleased about the grading system. Quality: this entails how the customer was initially greeted on receiving the call; how the required information was presented to the customer displaying a good understanding of the information required by the customer; how the conversation ended (which was referred to as wrap up), updating the information (the customer?s request and the agent?s response) into the customer?s profile in the system. Quantity: this is based on the average number of calls the agent receives per shift; the average talk time the agent spent on each customer and the wrap up time, and the average time between calls (this is from the time an agent ends a call to the time when the agent is ready to answer another call).

The agents are graded on a scale of 1, 3 and 5. The agents are not pleased and felt this was quite unrealistic because for each grade there was a set percentage. For instance to attain 3 grade the agent has to have 60% and to attain 5, 100%. This by itself had a d