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Recent research on service interactions indicates that negative displays of emotion by service providers play an important role in customer perceptions of the quality of the service. In this study, we examined the relations between attributions of responsibility for problems and the displays of negative emotions by service providers in service interactions. We hypothesized that attributions of responsibility for problems moderate the relation between the negativity of service providers’ prior and subsequent emotion displays and the relation between the negativity of emotion display by customers and service providers. To test our hypotheses, we collected data from telephone service interactions in a large retail bank in the northeastern United States and measured the negativity of emotion displays by using the Dictionary of Affect in Language. Our results showed that (1) the negativity of service providers’ prior emotion displays predicts the negativity of their subsequent displays, and (2) this relation is moderated by the attribution of responsibility for problems.

One of the mechanisms by which organizations promote adherence to requirements that employees display appropriate emotions is the use of discipline to punish emotional deviance. This study analyzed selected cases, in unionized settings, where the imposition of discipline had been grieved and culminated in arbitration. Analysis of these cases showed that emotional deviance was most often characterized as rudeness and a lack of courtesy, which took the form of inappropriate displays of anger and hostility, and failure to display interest, concern, and caring. Although some deviance was not excusable, when employee deviance was the result of unprovoked customer emotion this mitigated the assignment of blame. Employees were sometimes found to lack awareness of display rules or how to follow them, and were expected to defuse customer emotion. While discipline is seen as one mechanism for formally controlling emotional deviance, its effectiveness may be limited, particularly in situations where employees are likely to encounter strong negative customer emotion.

This paper aims to explore service encounters from a social behavior perspective. By proposing that employees’ emotional labor strategies are influenced by customer displays of emotion, this paper answers calls to investigate the reciprocal nature of service interactions and the importance of taking both customers and service providers into account when delivering high-quality service is the goal.

The sample consisted of 121 dyads of customers and service employees from hairstyling salons. Data were collected from observations of the customers’ emotional displays, self-report surveys administered to the service employees measuring strategies of emotional labor and self-report surveys administered to the customers to assess their rapport with the service providers and their loyalty intentions.

Length of acquaintance was positively related to customers’ positive display, which mediated the relationship between length of acquaintance and employee-customer rapport. Customers’ positive display was negatively related to employees’ deep acting (i.e. modifying inner feelings) but not to surface acting (i.e. modifying superficial expressions). Customers’ positive display and employees’ surface acting were related to loyalty intentions through the mediation of rapport.

This study provides a better understanding of the customer’s role as the target, and a possible cause of emotional regulation among service employees. It underscores the role of service relationships in customers’ emotional behavior and customer-related outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the emotional cycle of the relationship between service employees and customers using a social interaction model.

A total of 22 five-star hotels in Seoul area are selected. The survey was conducted by a mixed mail and visiting format. Of 340 questionnaires distributed, 27 were incomplete and thus eliminated from the study. As a result, 313 questionnaires were accepted for the purpose of final analysis, representing a response rate of 92 per cent.

The study found that service employees’ orientation and emotions are critical for predicting customers’ display of emotions and ensuring employees’ mood. In addition, employees’ emotions and service orientation have positive relationships with customers’ display of emotions; customers’ display of emotions have positive relationships with employees’ moods and task performance; and employees’ moods have positive relationships with task performance.

A key limitation of this study is that it is difficult to capture precisely the emotions of employees and customers using the five-point Likert scale. Second, there might be representative issue in his study because the survey was limited to brief encounter within in the hotel industry that focused only on five-star hotels in Seoul.

Through the study, to overcome the emotional labor, this study shows that an answer could lie in the connection between business outcomes and positive mood of employees. Managers should create a good environment for employee to work in a pleasant atmosphere. In addition, during the employee selection process, managers might hire talented and qualified front employees with friendly, courteous and extroverted characteristics.

The essential contribution of this study is that it provides initial empirical support for the social interaction model in an employee and customer service setting in the field of hospitality.

This study aims to test service providers’ ability to recognise non-verbal emotions in complaining customers of same and different cultures.

In a laboratory study, using a between-subjects experimental design (n = 153), we tested the accuracy of service providers’ perceptions of the emotional expressions of anger, fear, shame and happiness of customers from varying cultural backgrounds. After viewing video vignettes of customers complaining (with the audio removed), participants (in the role of service providers) assessed the emotional state of the customers portrayed in the video.

Service providers in culturally mismatched dyads were prone to misreading anger, happiness and shame expressed by dissatisfied customers. Happiness was misread in the displayed emotions of both dyads. Anger was recognisable in the Anglo customers but not Confucian Asian, while Anglo service providers misread both shame and happiness in Confucian Asian customers.

The study was conducted in the laboratory and was based solely on participant’s perceptions of actors’ non-verbal facial expressions in a single encounter.

Given the level of ethnic differences in developed nations, a culturally sensitive workplace is needed to foster effective functioning of service employee teams. Ability to understand cultural display rules and to recognise and interpret emotions is an important skill for people working in direct contact with customers.

This research addresses the lack of empirical evidence for the recognition of customer emotions by service providers and the impact of cross-cultural differences.

This paper aims to explore salesperson–customer interactions to identify actual behaviors that result in enhanced customer disclosure and classify them as disclosure tactics, and to explore whether certain tactics are more likely to lead to salesperson–customer relationship advancement.

This qualitative research uses conversation analysis to identify salesperson disclosure tactics that result in customer disclosure, using 12 video-recordings of authentic business-to-business initial sales meetings between a salesperson and customer.

Findings showed four disclosure tactics that salespeople use to get customers to disclose information: embedded expertise claims, tailored references, demonstrations of preparation and customer orientation and benevolence. These tactics appear more often and are executed differently in sales meetings that successfully advance.

The research addresses an unexplored area of specific salesperson behaviors and their connection to customer disclosure and relationship advancement in the exploration phase. Additionally, this fills a gap that cannot be addressed with traditional survey or interview data and brings conversation analysis to this particular area.

Emotion work benefits service organizations, but high emotion-workloads lead to negative consequences for employees. We examined differences between employees highly competent in emotion work (Experts) and those who are less competent (Novices). We found that Novices conformed to organizational level display rules, used simple strategies and felt overwhelmed by their emotion-workload. In contrast, Experts followed interaction level display rules, used proactive strategies, and found emotion work to be effortless. This suggests that emotion work competence can act as a firewall buffering employees from negative consequences. Hospitality organizations can benefit from encouraging employees to increase their emotion work competence.

While research evidences how customers’ emotions can influence their consumer experience, understanding of how employees’ displayed emotions affect the customer service experience is more limited. Drawing on affect transfer theory, the authors test for the mediating role of attitude towards the employee, which is proposed to mediate the effect of employees’ displayed emotion on customers’ satisfaction with recovery. As service recovery entails a critical service experience in which emotions can easily rise, this paper aims to highlight the pivotal role of employee-displayed emotions during service recovery.

A scenario-based experiment in the context of an airline service failure recovery (3 × 2 between-subjects design) manipulates frontline employees’ emotions (anger vs happiness vs no specific emotion) and the quality of the solution (bad vs good).

Employees’ displayed emotions directly affect attitude towards the employee and indirectly affect service recovery satisfaction. Moreover, attitude towards the employee is affected more by the employee’s displayed emotion when the solution offered is bad compared to good.

Employees’ emotions displayed during service recovery can enhance or damage service recovery strategies. Employees should control for negative emotions in the case of service failure, especially when unable to provide a good solution.

Emotions displayed by employees can influence the customer’s service recovery evaluations. There is an interesting interaction between the quality of the solution and employees’ displayed emotions. Additionally, the mantra of “service with a smile” may not be valid in the case of service recovery: rather, employees should avoid displaying negative emotions.

A pesar de que la literatura ha demostrado la importancia que tienen las emociones en los consumidores, se sabe poco acerca de cómo influyen las emociones de los empleados. Basándonos en la teoría de la transferencia de afecto, testamos el papel mediador de la actitud hacia el empleado. Ésta se propone como mediadora del efecto que tiene la emoción mostrada por el empleado en la satisfacción del cliente. Este trabajo resalta el papel fundamental de las emociones mostradas por el empleado durante la recuperación del servicio.

Experimento (3x2 entre sujetos) basado en el fallo de una aerolínea. Se manipulan las emociones del empleado (enfado vs alegría vs ninguna emoción específica) y la calidad de la solución (mala vs buena).

Las emociones mostradas por los empleados afectan directamente a la actitud hacia el empleado e indirectamente a la satisfacción con la recuperación del servicio. La actitud se ve más afectada por la emoción mostrada por el empleado cuando la solución ofrecida es mala.

Las emociones mostradas por los empleados pueden contribuir o dañar las estrategias de recuperación del servicio. Los empleados deben controlar las emociones negativas, especialmente cuando no pueden ofrecer una buena solución.

Las emociones mostradas por los empleados influyen en la recuperación del servicio. Existe interacción entre la calidad de la solución y la emoción del empleado. Además, la consigna de “atender al cliente con una sonrisa” puede no ser válida en este contexto, siendo más relevante que los empleados no muestren emociones negativas.

虽然研究证明了顾客的情绪如何影响他们的消费体验, 但对员工所表现出的情绪如何影响顾客服务体验的理解却比较有限。借鉴情感转移理论, 我们测试了对员工态度的中介作用, 提出了员工表现出的情绪对客户对服务补救满意度影响的中介作用。由于服务补救涉及情绪容易上升的关键服务体验, 本文强调了员工表现出的情绪在服务补救过程中的关键作用。

在航空公司服务故障补救的背景下, 一个基于场景的实验（3x2主体间设计）操纵了一线员工的情绪（愤怒vs快乐vs无特定情绪）和解决方案的质量（差vs好）。

员工表现出来的情绪直接影响顾客对员工的态度, 间接影响对服务补救的满意度。此外, 当所提供的解决方案质量是差的, 而不是好的, 顾客对员工的态度受员工所表现的情绪的影响更大。

员工在服务补救过程中表现出来的情绪可以增强或破坏服务补救策略。在服务失败的情况下, 员工应该控制消极的情绪, 特别是在无法提供一个好的解决方案时。

员工表现出来的情绪会影响顾客的服务补救的评价。解决方案的质量和员工表现的情绪之间存在着有趣的互动。此外, “微笑服务 “的口号在服务补救的情况下可能是无效的：相反, 员工应该避免表现出负面情绪。

The purpose of this paper is to examine causal attribution in interactional service experiences. The paper investigates how triggers in the environment of a customer-employee interaction influence customer behavioral response to employees’ negative and positive affect. Additionally, it studies the role of sympathy and authenticity as underlying mechanisms of this relationship.

Two scenario-based experimental designs (N1=162; N2=138) were used. Videotaped scenarios served as stimulus material for the manipulation of two focal variables: the employee’s emotional display as either negative or positive and the availability of an emotion trigger in the interaction environment to convey the attribution dimension of cause uncontrollability. The emotion trigger’s visibility was varied in the two studies. Customer response was captured by buying intentions.

Customer responses are more favorable for both positive and negative interactional experiences when customers have access to information on cause uncontrollability (i.e. notice triggers in the interaction environment). Analyses reveal that these effects stem from feelings of sympathy for negative experiences and authenticity for positive experiences.

This research supports the relevance of causal attribution research on interactional service experiences, which have high-profit impact. Moreover, the findings underline the importance of the experience of fact in service interactions and thereby provide a more nuanced view on the discussion of whether service providers should use impression management strategies to engender customer satisfaction even when this behavior is “faked.”

The concept of emotional labor refers to the management of emotions in interaction with customers. This study aims to suggest an integrative definition of emotional labor. It develops a conceptual framework that helps organize and synthesize key insights from the literature, in an interactional and multi-level perspective.

This integrated framework consists in a mapping of key research themes resulting from a systematic literature review, which includes research in sales and marketing. As critical affective processes in sales have not been studied sufficiently, both in business-to-business and business-to-customer selling, this review also incorporates works in other research fields.

Sales representatives’ emotional labor must be considered as a bi-directional interaction with the customer in a multi-level perspective. Moreover, emotional labor has rather negative consequences for the salesperson (e.g. burnout and job stress), but may have positive sales and customer outcomes. Findings suggest that the expression of genuine emotions should be used during sales interactions. In addition, organizations should prevent customers’ negative behaviors (e.g. mistreatment).

Emotional labor key practical implications with regard to several management functions such as the recruitment, performance management and training (Ashkanasy and Daus, 2002) of the sales representatives.

Research on emotional labor in a sales ecosystem is scarce. It has largely covered service industry employees in contact with customers, but has not paid enough attention to sales representatives (Mikeska et al., 2015). The proposed integrated framework concerning emotional labor focuses on the bi-directional interaction between the sales representatives and their customers.