COMPUTERIZATION, PRODUCTIVITY, AND QUALITY OF WORK-LIFE.

The article presents a study on the impact of a computerized record system on work lives of customer service representatives in a large utility company. The study includes 10 offices employing a total of 485 service representatives in 6 cities. Top management decided to automate the customer service department to increase efficiency and cut labor costs. They installed equipment that would computerize information that service representatives had previously viewed on microfiche and altered by completing paper transaction records. Compared to the microfiche system it replaced, the interactive computer system was to provide service representatives with more recent billing information in a more convenient way and to allow interactive updating of customers' accounts. To provide the informational support for these customer contact tasks, each representative had a microfiche reader and a set of microfiche copies of recent bills for all accounts serviced by that office. Older bills were kept in a central storage area, and service representatives had to leave their desks to retrieve them.