Customer service is at the centre of many recent changes in work and organisations and is often celebrated as being of benefit to all. This book explores the real nature of customer service from different critical perspectives drawing on a wide range of sectors internationally.

A provocative and insightful work aimed at students of organisations and management as well as thoughtful practitioners.

Notes on the Contributors
Servicing Societies?: Colonisation, Control, Contradiction and Contestation; A.Sturdy
Academic Discourses of the Customer: Sovereign Beings, Management Accomplices or People Like Us?; P.Rosenthal, R.Peccei & S.Hill
Representing Customer Service: Telephones and Texts; E.Wray-Bliss
Juggling Justice and Care: Gendered Customer Service in the Contemporary Airline Industry; M.Tyler & S.Taylor
The Contradictions of Service Work: The Call Centre as Customer-Oriented Bureaucracy; M.Korczynski
From Person to System Oriented Customer Service; G.Ritzer & T.Stillman
"Empowering Customers Through Education" or Governing Without Government?; D.Hodgson
Struggles for the Control of Affect: Resistance as Politics and Emotion; A.Sturdy & S.Fineman
The Customer is Always Right? Customer Satisfaction Surveys as Employee Control Mechanisms in Professional Service Work; J.Manley
The Importance of Being Aesthetic: Work, Employment and Service Organisation; D.Nickson, C.Warhurst, A.Witz & A.Cullen
Relationship Marketing, E-commerce and the Emancipation of the Consumer; J.Fitchett & P.McDonagh
Epilogue; P.du Gay

ANDREW STURDY is Reader in Organisation Studies, School of Management, Imperial College, University of London.

IRENA GRUGULIS is Reader in Employment Studies, School of Management, University of Salford.

HUGH WILLMOTT is Diageo Professor of Management Studies, The Judge Institute of Management, University of Cambridge.