Customer service can kill you

Excerpts from
Emotion Regulation in the Workplace: A New Way to Conceptualize Emotional Labor
Alicia A Grandey, Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University
in Journal of Occupational Health Psychology

Customer Service Performance

• In the service industry, managing emotions (showing happiness and empathy, not fear or anger) is an important facet of maintaining loyal customers and repeat business.
• As a means of presenting a positive image of the organization and inducing the appropriate feelings in customers, managing emotions may result in good customer service performance.
• However, the personal effort of emotion regulation may impair cognitive performance.
• Burnout is a stress outcome typically found in employees in the helping industries.
• Several authors have mentioned the importance of emotional displays being seen as “genuine” in service settings.
• Emotional expressions that are perceived as insincere may negatively impact customer service. Emotion research has found that when people “fake” emotions, there seems to be “leakage” so that observers can detect the deception. Surface acting is negatively related to service performance.
• If employees are not showing genuine expressions, emotional labor may be dysfunctional to employees by creating a need to dissociate from self.
• Individuals generally do not like to feel "fake", because suppressing true emotions and expressing false emotions requires effort that results in stress outcomes.
• Research has linked the inhibition of emotions to a variety of physical illness, including higher blood pressure and cancer. Inability to express negative emotion is one of the strongest predictors of cancer.
• When employees really feel the way they act, it is perceived as genuine, and is positively related to customer service.
• Servers who don't feel "false," have more job satisfaction than those who fake emotions.

Autonomy

• Feeling a lack of control over events has been identified as a source of life stress, as well as job stress.
• Those who have high autonomy have lower emotional exhaustion in both high and low emotional labor-typed jobs. Job autonomy is negatively related to emotional dissonance and emotional exhaustion, and positively related to job satisfaction.

Supervisor and coworker support

• Support from coworkers and supervisors creates a positive working environment. An employee's perception that she works in a supportive climate has been found to relate to job satisfaction, lowered stress, and turnover intentions, and higher team performance.
• Those who perceive high levels of supervisor support may report high levels of emotional labor but not burnout because support acts as a buffer against the stressors.
• Support may help employees cope with the stress of service jobs. Talking to other people is a method of coping with difficult customers. Disclosure of emotional events helps individuals cope with stress and buffer against health risks. Social support in service settings helps protect individuals from stress, and is a buffer against job dissatisfaction.
• In customer service settings, where positive expressions are expected, feeling positive about the social environment may mean that less emotional labor is necessary. One may genuinely feel the emotions that are expected in a service environment if the interpersonal relationships are positive and supportive.

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Moral of the story:

For the Manager: Forcing people to serve customers is counter-productive. Instead, you should hire the right people, serve them as you would have them serve the customer, and give them the power to serve.

For the Provider: We all have to pretend some of the time. But if you have to fake it most of the time, customer service may kill you. You should probably get a less stressful job.