Search results

Service work is often differentiated from manufacturing by the interactive labor workers perform as they come into direct contact with customers. Service organizations are particularly interested in regulating these interactions because they are a key opportunity for developing quality customer service, customer retention, and ultimately generation of sales revenue. An important stream of sociological literature focuses on managerial attempts to exert control over interactions through various techniques including routinization, standardization, and surveillance. Scripting is a common method of directing workers’ behavior, yet studies show that workers are extremely reluctant to administer scripts, judging them to be inappropriate to particular interactions or because they undermine their own sense of self. This paper examines a panoptic method of regulating service workers, embodied in undercover corporate agents who patrol employee’s adherence to scripts. How do workers required to recite scripts for customers respond to undercover control? What does it reveal about the nature of interactive labor? In-depth interviews with interactive workers in a range of retail contexts reveal that they mobilize their own interactional competence to challenge the effects of the panoptic, as they utilize strategies to identify and adapt to these “mystery shoppers,” all the while maintaining their cover. The paper shows the limits on control of interactive workers, as they maintain their own socialized sense of civility and preserve a limited realm of autonomy in their work.

This chapter investigated tactics used by customer service employees in performing emotion work during their interactions with customers and those internal to organizations. Based on a qualitative study in the hospitality industry, I discovered that customer service employees used a range of tactics that impact different phases of the emotion regulation process in order to facilitate emotion work. One group of tactics was directed towards the work context while the other was self-directed in an attempt to regulate the experience and expression of emotion. Taken together these two groups of tactics provide a holistic portrayal of the range of tactics used by customer service employees in performing emotion work.

This chapter describes the role of service employees’ motives for emotion regulation in interactions with customers. To date, there has been little research and theoretical work on motives for emotion regulation in service work. The reason for this may lie in the fact that there is an implicit general assumption that employees regulate their emotions in customer interactions because of display rules given by the organization. We argue that service employees have more motives for emotion regulation than adhering to display rules. We propose that three fundamental motive categories which are relevant for general emotion regulation are also relevant in the service work context. Moreover, we argue that the different motive categories are important antecedents for the further emotion regulation process. We propose that depending on the motive category different emotion regulation strategies are used as well as moderating effects of the motives with an impact on the consequences of emotion regulation such as well-being. The chapter concludes by pointing to practical implications.

In this chapter, we summarize and build on the current state of the customer mistreatment literature in an effort to further future research on this topic. First, we detail the four primary conceptualizations of customer mistreatment. Second, we present a multilevel model of customer mistreatment, which distinguishes between the unfolding processes at the individual employee level and the service encounter level. In particular, we consider the antecedents and outcomes unique to each level of analysis as well as mediators and moderators. Finally, we discuss important methodological concerns and recommendations for future research.

Drawing on affect-based mechanisms, this chapter describes two forms of customer mistreatment, aggressive and demanding mistreatment. Tests are conducted of their lagged effects in predicting within-person fluctuation of employees’ negative mood, as well as the moderating roles of employees’ emotion regulation after work (i.e., rumination and social sharing). 1,185 daily surveys were collected from 149 Chinese customer service representatives from a call center for eight weekdays. Results supported the main effects of both forms of customer mistreatment and partly supported the moderating roles of rumination in strengthening the impacts of customer mistreatment. Implications and limitations are discussed.

Interactions between customers and service providers are ubiquitous. Some of these encounters are routine, but many are characterized by conflict and intense emotions. This chapter introduces a new theory, service encounter needs theory (SENT) that aims to elucidate the mechanisms through which service encounter behaviors affect outcomes for customers and employees. Evidence is presented for the preeminence within these encounters of eight psychosocial needs, and propositions are advanced regarding likely antecedents to fulfillment and violation of these needs. Emotional experiences and displays are viewed as important consequences of need fulfillment and violation, as are numerous cognitive, behavioral, and health-related outcomes.

Service employees engage in Emotional Labor (EL), either through surface acting (SA) or deep acting (DA), when they interact with aggressive customers, so that they are able to abide to the organizational rules. Current studies have shown that employees engage only in SA when they interact with aggressive customers due to a number of reasons. Based on this, the authors undertake an exhaustive review and analysis of existing literature on EL, in order to enhance our understanding of the DA concept. Consequent to this analysis, tha authors interrelate and present the various research findings into a unified comprehensive framework for engaging in DA during a service encounter. Conclusively, the authors discuss the implications of the developed framework for the scholar community and management practice in the hospitality industry, and the authors propose various avenues for further research.

Occupational stress is common in the workplace and leads to various negative outcomes such as burnout, turnover, and medical problems. Although occupational stress is associated with negative connotations, it also can foster workplace resiliency. Workplace resiliency involves the ability to recover quickly in the face of adversity. Emotionally laborious jobs, or jobs in which employees must modify, manage, or regulate their emotions as part of their work role, are inherently stressful. Thus, such jobs, while stress-inducing, may also offer employees opportunities to become more resilient at work. Currently, display rules, rules encouraging the suppression and expression of certain emotions, dictate workplace emotions and thus, interactions. Ultimately, display rule adherence makes it difficult for employees engaging in emotional labor to build resilience. In this chapter, the authors detail how and when emotional labor encounters lead to episodic and prolonged workplace resilience. Specifically, the authors outline instances in which employees engaging in emotional labor can create and sustain workplace resiliency by not deploying an acting strategy and instead, breaking character. The authors further discuss individual and organizational factors that may impact this process as well such as personality and organizational culture that serve as potential boundary conditions to workplace resilience capacity. The authors conclude with implications for both researchers and practitioners.

This study addresses the debate regarding employee discretion and neo-normative forms of control within interactive service work. Discretion is central to core and long-standing debates within the sociology of work and organizations such as skill, control and job quality. Yet, despite this, the concept of discretion remains underdeveloped. We contend that changes in the nature of work, specifically in the context of interactive service work, require us to revisit classical theorizations of discretion. The paper elaborates the concept of value discretion; defined as the scope for employees to interpret the meaning of the espoused values of their organization. We illustrate how value discretion provides a foundational basis for further forms of task discretion within a customized service call-centre. The study explores the link between neo-normative forms of control and the labour process by elaborating the concept of value discretion to provide new insights into the relationship between managerial control and employee agency within contemporary service labour processes.

The aim of the research reported in this article was to develop a conceptual model that links emotional labor strategies performed by service employees to a number of relevant antecedents as well as to a variety of customer outcomes. We link emotional labor directly to the customer domain by examining how customers experience and react to emotional displays of service employees. Thus, we expand current emotional labor research which has predominantly focused on employee and organizational outcomes but has offered limited theoretical guidance as to how customers may be directly affected by emotional labor in the service delivery process. Specific research propositions are developed that offer insight into the antecedents and potential impact of emotional labor strategies on customer behavior. Managerial and research implications as well as avenues for future research are discussed from the perspective of emotional labor theory.