Hello, customer service speaking, how can I help you? - Restructuring of customer service in the public sector and the consequences for job quality

The aim of this article is to examine a specific aspect of restructuring in the public sector: the implementation of call centres in customer service and its effects on job quality. The trend to organise customer service through call centres gained worldwide importance back in the 1990s. In the public sector it emerges only recently in connection to strategies of 'new public management'. The article presents five international case study organisations from the public sector from Austria, Italy, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden. The article concludes that the implementation of call centres or the outsourcing of customer service to private service providers has severe consequences for the quality of employment in the public sector and in the new - female dominated - service sector jobs. This concerns in particular the following three aspects: fragmentation of employment, qualification versus standardisation and interest representation.