I work from home as a customer service representative. The website and projects presented here were made during my workday. Texts were written while customers spoke, structures were assembled during calls, and audio was edited while I wrote emails.
Customer service is not temporary employment or a day job. It is both my operating system and the work’s.
The position is not entirely scripted. Scripts establish the beginning of each conversation and the limits of what may be said, but most interactions require a highly personalized form of attention. Many customers call regularly. Over time, service begins to depend upon memory, selective disclosure, and the careful performance of recognition. The job has trained me to hear small changes in a voice: hesitation, anger, loneliness, arousal, coercion, compliance, panic, and need. It has also trained me to alter my own voice in response.
I work in the longevity industry, where death, pain, bodily function, sex, youth, beauty, status, and science are converted into symbols, products, and promises, then sold through carefully calibrated persuasion. At times, I must sound young enough to sell the promise of regained youth. At others, old enough to understand the need for it, experienced enough to speak from within that need, and fluent enough in the language of multiple institutions to address established professionals with authority while allowing them to preserve their own.
HOW TO ADOPT AN INSTITUTION’S INSTITUTIONAL LANGUAGE AND PERFORM BEFORE THE INSTITUTION IN ONLY AN INSTANT
Play two discussions about the institution’s language outloud.
Make sure that both are conducted entirely in the institution’s language.
Play them both at the same time
Respond to customer emails.
Let all the speakers argue.
Do not listen.
Notice that the wrong institution’s language has begun to enter the emails.
Change “clients” back to the “patients.”
Change “repetition” back to “compulsion.”
Change “market value” back to “clinical value,” but continue to speak of it in terms of yield, return, and measurable worth.
Send the email.
Get up.
Take a one-hour walk.
Play the audio again.
Actually listen this time.
Describe everything you see using the new language.
Make each sentance overlong.
Make each extremely direct.
Keep a serious expression, as though you know what you are talking about.
Furrow your brow.
Squint your eyes.
Nod in concentrated agreement.
If you know it well enough to annoy yourself: you are ready for dinner with the doctors.
Go home.
Get dressed.
Perform.
The instructions above were followed in preparing the voice through which this statement is performed.
On the phone, I sometimes offer customers pieces of my life when they help an interaction. Sometimes I invent them. Customers do not know which is which. Through shifts in vocal register, rhythm, diction, syntax, accent, and degrees of disclosure, I can be heard as occupying different positions of age, education, origin, and experience.
The same conditions apply here.
The amount of information offered does not determine the amount of access provided.
The speakers within the work do not belong to one stable biography or time, each has a distictive relationship with trust, style, and restraint. More than one voice may occupy a single speaker at once, simultaniously overlaping, interrupting, competing for control, and working togther. As our script always reminds us: “Assistance is reciprocal.”
HOW TO END ON A HIGH NOTE:
Adopt a higher register.
Add a smile to the voice.
Open your mouth.
Say:
“It’s my pleasure.”
“Assistance is reciprocal.”
“Thank you for your time.”
“Have a wonderful day.”
Hang up the phone.
Wait for the next call to come in.
Autobiography is used, but it is withheld, repeated, cut apart, reorganized, and placed beside fabricated performance.
The work is presented by a customer service representative. No personal name or unobscured portrait will be publicly associated with it. When my physical presence is necessary, identifying features of my face and body will remain entirely concealed. I will use the practiced voice I use with ordinary customers: calm, functional, and difficult to place.
A face can quickly become a complete explanation. Partial information often assigns meaning to a moment before it has had time to unfold. I would rather be encountered under the conditions of a telephone call, before my face or biography can tell you how to judge what is happening.
Physical encounters take place within an apartment.
You may not see my face, but the encounter remains reciprocal: you may enter my home and move within the walls where I live and work.
Movement between rooms is directed through choreography inspired by childhood theater productions. The voice directing you may shift between childhood and vastly different stages of adult life. You may not know which voice has placed you where you are.
Thank you for your time.
Assistance is reciprocal.