Spillover Effects of Emotional Labor in Customer Service Encounters Toward Coworker Harming: A Resource Depletion Perspective

In interactive customer service encounters, the dignity of the parties becomes the currency of a commercial transaction. Service firms that profit from customer satisfaction place great emphasis on emotional labor, the work that service providers do to make customers feel cared for and esteemed. But performing emotional labor can deny dignity to workers by highlighting their subservience and requiring them to suppress their own emotions in an effort to elevate the status and experiences of their customers. Paradoxically, the burden of performing emotional labor may also impose transactional costs on some customers by facilitating discrimination in service delivery. Drawing on the extant scholarship on emotional labor and ongoing research on full-service restaurants, we argue that the strain and indignities of performing emotional labor, often for precarious compensation, lead servers to adopt various coping strategies, including some that open the door to their delivery of inferior and inhospitable service. When these strains and indignities are coupled with culturally entrenched racial stereotypes and racialized discourse in the workplace, the result is that people of color—a legally protected category of customers—are systematically denied dignity and equality by being excluded from the benefits of welcoming and caring customer service. Discriminatory customer service often is so subtle and ambiguous that it escapes legal accountability. It nevertheless warrants our attention, because it contributes to the social and economic marginalization of people of color. Far from being a mundane or trivial concern, the dynamics described in this Article underscore the various ways in which particular groups come to be designated as suitable targets for a wide range of disregard and mistreatment. These dynamics also illuminate how structural conditions facilitate and promote economic discrimination, as well as the connections between workers’ rights and civil rights.

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A Study of Customer Service Representatives’ Emotional Labor on Emotional Dissonance, Job-induced Tension and Turnover Intention

Journal of Korea Service Management Society ◽

10.15706/jksms.2017.18.2.001 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 18 (2) ◽

pp. 1-24

Author(s):

Incheol Tak ◽

차재빈 ◽

김동현

Keyword(s):

Customer Service ◽

Emotional Labor ◽

Turnover Intention ◽

Emotional Dissonance ◽

Customer Service Representatives

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Mitigating Burnout Through Organizational Justice: Customer Support Workers’ Experiences of Customer Injustice and Emotional Labor

Management Communication Quarterly ◽

10.1177/08933189211012040 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 089331892110120

Author(s):

Heewon Kim ◽

Rebecca B. Leach

Keyword(s):

Procedural Justice ◽

Customer Service ◽

Emotional Labor ◽

Call Center ◽

Service Industries ◽

Interpersonal Justice ◽

Negatively Associated ◽

Customer Support ◽

Decision Making Processes

Employee burnout is a critical organizational concern that can be prevalent among customer support workers whose day-to-day tasks inherently include emotional labor. This study examines emotional labor and burnout among call center workers in customer service industries, specifically focusing on the influences of injustices from customers and supervisors. The findings demonstrate that: (a) customer injustice was associated with an increase in emotional labor, which in turn exacerbated customer support workers’ disengagement and exhaustion; (b) interpersonal justice perceived in the interactions with supervisors was negatively associated with disengagement; and (c) procedural justice perceived in supervisors’ decision-making processes was also negatively associated with disengagement. The findings indicate the mitigating role of interpersonal and procedural justice in reducing burnout among customer support workers.

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Effective Surveillance Management during Service Encounters

Advances in Marketing, Customer Relationship Management, and E-Services - Socio-Economic Perspectives on Consumer Engagement and Buying Behavior ◽

10.4018/978-1-5225-2139-6.ch006 ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 118-139

Author(s):

Angelo Bonfanti

Keyword(s):

Service Quality ◽

Conceptual Framework ◽

Customer Service ◽

Service Management ◽

Service Encounters ◽

Surveillance Systems ◽

Future Studies ◽

Starting Point ◽

Management Perspective ◽

Service Oriented

This chapter aims to theoretically examine effective surveillance management (ESM) during service encounters within the servicescape and provide a conceptual framework for the study of this topic in a service management perspective. It analyses antecedents, dimensions and effects of ESM. This study especially proposes as antecedents both improving customer service experience along with meeting customers' need for security and implementing a surveillance service-oriented strategy that includes secure and safe servicescape design, deterrent communication, and trained and motivated security staff. This chapter suggests also that the dimensions of ESM (customer-physical service environment encounters, customer-technological surveillance systems encounters, and customer-security staff encounters) contribute to enhancing service quality, experience quality, and staff productivity. The integration of these dimensions, antecedents, and effects create a theoretically grounded framework that can serve as a starting point for future studies about this topic in the field of service management.

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Managing the human–chatbot divide: how service scripts influence service experience

Journal of Service Management ◽

10.1108/josm-06-2019-0203 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Sean Sands ◽

Carla Ferraro ◽

Colin Campbell ◽

Hsiu-Yuan Tsao

Keyword(s):

Customer Service ◽

Human Service ◽

Purchase Intention ◽

Service Encounters ◽

Content Type ◽

Final Sample ◽

Service Outcomes ◽

Close Proximity ◽

Consumer Purchase Intention ◽

Service Interactions

PurposeBrands are increasingly considering the use of chatbots to supplement, or even replace, humans in service interactions. Like humans, chatbots can follow certain service scripts in their encounters, which can subsequently determine the customer experience. Service scripts are verbal prescriptions that seek to standardize customer service interactions. However, while the role of service scripts is well documented, despite the increasing use of chatbots as a service mechanism, less is known about the effect, on consumers, of different service scripts presented during chatbot service encounters.Design/methodology/approachAn experimental scenario was developed to test the research hypotheses. Respondents were randomly allocated to scenarios representing a 2 (service interaction: human, chatbot) × 2 (service script: education, entertainment) design. A total of 262 US consumers constituted the final sample for the study.FindingsThe findings indicate that when employing an education script, a significant positive effect occurs for human service agents (compared to chatbots) in terms of both satisfaction and purchase intention. These effects are fully mediated by emotion and rapport, showing that the bonds developed through the close proximity to a human service agent elicit emotion and develop rapport, which in turn influence service outcomes. However, this result is present only when an educational script is used.OriginalityThis paper contributes to the emerging service marketing literature on the use of digital services, in particular chatbots, in service interactions. We show that differences occur in key outcomes dependent on the type of service script employed (education or entertainment). For managers, this study indicates that chatbot interactions can be tailored (in script delivered) in order to maximize emotion and rapport and subsequently consumer purchase intention and satisfaction.

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The Moment of Truth: A Review, Synthesis, and Research Agenda for the Customer Service Experience

Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior ◽

10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-012218-015056 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 89-113 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Markus Groth ◽

Yu Wu ◽

Helena Nguyen ◽

Anya Johnson

Keyword(s):

Customer Service ◽

Emotional Labor ◽

Customer Orientation ◽

Current Knowledge ◽

Service Research ◽

Future Research ◽

Central Feature ◽

Service Employees ◽

Theoretical Perspectives ◽

The Moment

Customer service is a central feature of the service context. As service research has evolved into a burgeoning multidisciplinary field, management scholars have developed an impressive body of research regarding the antecedents, processes, and outcomes of customer service. We provide an integrative review and synthesis of the literature with a focus on three important and interrelated aspects of customer service that specifically focus on the interpersonal service interaction between employees and customers: ( a) affect in customer service, including emotional labor and emotional contagion processes; ( b) customer mistreatment, the low-quality interpersonal treatment of customers toward service employees; and ( c) customer service behaviors, including customer orientation and service-oriented citizenship behaviors. We review theoretical perspectives for each of these streams of research and summarize the current knowledge regarding empirical findings. We provide a critical assessment of the literature and conclude with a discussion of future research agendas and practical implications for service managers.

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Acting the part: Emotional intelligence and job satisfaction as predictors of emotional labor in travel agencies

Tourism and Hospitality Research ◽

10.1177/1467358420965653 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 146735842096565

Author(s):

Milena Nedeljković Knežević ◽

Marko D Petrović ◽

Sanja Kovačić ◽

Maja Mijatov ◽

Darko B Vuković ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Job Satisfaction ◽

Emotional Intelligence ◽

Customer Service ◽

Emotional Labor ◽

Structural Equation ◽

Work Motivation ◽

Future Research ◽

Mediating Role ◽

Travel Agencies ◽

Novi Sad

Employees of retail travel agencies in sales roles can have long-lasting, direct contact with tourists which, in the case of poor customer service, can be extremely problematic for businesses. Because of this, it is important to understand how employees manage their emotions to help them to remain satisfied with their work, thus contributing to the satisfaction of tourists. However, job satisfaction, emotional intelligence and emotional labor in tourism have not previously been studied together as variables in a single model. This research analyses the mediating role of emotional intelligence in the relationship between job satisfaction and emotional labor in travel agencies, as well as job satisfaction as an antecedent of emotional labor. Data were collected from 160 employees of 45 travel agencies in the Serbian cities of Belgrade and Novi Sad. Results show that employees’ emotional intelligence mediates the positive relationship between job satisfaction and emotional labor. Management implications: Increasing employees’ emotional intelligence through training and development and actively recruiting employees with high emotional intelligence will reduce emotional exhaustion and improve customer satisfaction for retail travel agencies. Future research should include employees from other countries, in order to make comparisons and to validate results, as well as to test the created model by structural equation modelling (SEM), involving some other possible mediators, such as socio-demographics, personality traits or work motivation.

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The battlefields of leisure: simple forms of labor control in the Turkish hospitality sector

New Perspectives on Turkey ◽

10.1017/npt.2020.19 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 63 ◽

pp. 4-31

Author(s):

Hüseyin Yener Erköse

Keyword(s):

Customer Service ◽

Emotional Labor ◽

Participant Observation ◽

Process Analysis ◽

Ethnographic Study ◽

Control Mechanisms ◽

Labor Control ◽

Routine Tasks ◽

Managerial Perceptions ◽

Hospitality Sector

AbstractThis article is based on an ethnographic study in the Turkish hospitality sector and examines the employment of simple forms of labor control in hospitality service work from the perspective of labor process analysis. It introduces ethnographic data from two holiday villages on the southern coast of Turkey serving international customers. The two holiday villages were workplaces that employed mostly young workers for low-skill, routine tasks that demanded intense physical and emotional labor, but without due remuneration, career chances, and employment security. Data based on participant observation and in-depth interviews point to an increasing managerial reliance on simple forms of labor control. This happens as a result of intensifying competition among hospitality firms in a market with volatile demand and managerial perceptions regarding employees’ lack of customer service skills due to routinization and simplification of tasks after the introduction of the all-inclusive boarding system. Such market-related developments encourage employers to use simple control mechanisms that help in adjusting staffing levels, imposing loyalty, cutting costs, and ensuring efficiency.

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