This inquiry expands extant politeness theories by clarifying how changes in politeness conventions occur as a result of contextual specificities. Few studies to date have explored the linguistic enactment of politeness in call centres. Drawing on a linguistic ethnography of an onshore call centre in Scotland and data in the form of authentic service interactions, interviews, on‐site observations, and institutional documents, this inquiry unites quantitative and qualitative discourse analytic techniques to examine how the call centre‐particular tension between efficiency and customer care is managed in theory and practice. It is found that agents prioritize efficiency, and in the few cases where agents do orient to customer care, vocatives seem to be employed as a shortcut evidencing the emergence of a novel – rationalized – type of politeness. This inquiry adds the theoretical insight that novel politeness conventions may appear, not so much because of the imposition of one culture on another, but because they are molded by the specific context in which they emerge.