This paper investigates the rapport management (Spencer-Oatey 2005) that collections agents at a UK-based utilities company call centre are expected to perform during debt collection telephone interactions. It does so by examining the rapport-relevant information communicated in the textual materials, including training manuals and call-scoring criteria, through which a prescribed debt collection style is disseminated and implemented. The analysis reveals that there are tensions in the rapport-concerns collectors must attend to when using the style. Collectors are instructed to perform potentially face-threatening behaviours in order to collect debt, whilst simultaneously engaging in linguistic behaviour that may be interpreted as face-enhancing and which functions to develop rapport with the debtor. It is suggested that the local deployment of this contradictory “helping you to pay us” philosophy is problematic on multiple levels and may give rise to relational tensions between collectors and debtors who have conflicting expectations about rapport management entitlements. In turn, this may contribute to a culture of sanctioned face-attacks in call centres (Archer and Jagodzinski 2015). Therefore, I suggest that call centres may need to loosen the syncedochical hold they have over their employees, thereby affording them the flexibility and volition to cope with the complex face demands, unpredictability and potential volatility of debt collection encounters.

中文翻译：

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“帮助您付款给我们”：收债呼叫中心的交往管理

本文研究了总部位于英国的公用事业公司呼叫中心的收款代理人在收债电话互动期间应执行的融洽管理（Spencer-Oatey 2005）。它通过检查文本材料中传达的与关系有关的信息来做到这一点，包括培训手册和呼叫计分标准，通过这些信息来传播和实施规定的收债方式。分析显示，在使用样式时，收藏家必须注意的关怀问题中存在张力。指示收款人采取可能威胁人面的行为以收债，同时进行可能被解释为增强面孔的语言行为，并起到与债务人建立融洽关系的作用。建议在本地部署这种矛盾的“帮助您付款”的哲学在多个层面上都是有问题的，并且可能会导致对融洽的管理权利有期望的收债者与债务人之间的关系紧张。反过来，这可能有助于在呼叫中心建立受制裁的面部攻击文化（Archer和Jagodzinski 2015）。因此，我建议呼叫中心可能需要放松对员工的共鸣控制，从而为他们提供灵活性和自愿性，以应对复杂的面孔需求，不可预测性和收债遭遇的潜在波动性。