Service Work and Employee Experience of the Service Encounter

Due to the very nature of service work, a vast majority of research has focused on interpersonal aspects. There are mainly two perspectives; the first takes departure from the customers’ point of view and focus on customer satisfaction and business success.The second, rather critical, perspective highlights the employees’ experiences of the service interaction. Our purpose is to combine, summarize, and test – often the oreticaland sometimes normative – proposals and statements from both these perspectives. The empirical data is derived from (a) a questionnaire to a random sample of 2000 Swedish employees with daily customer/client contact in their work, and (b) in-depth interviews with 21 employees, working as shop assistants, receptionists, travel agents etc. The study covers areas such as routinization; superiority and subordination; customer identification; rapport; aesthetic labour; the use of humour, charm and flirt; and the dealing with troublesome or rude customers. Our research shows how service encounters are a source of well-being, satisfaction, and commercial success, as well as a source of control and stress. The employees have to suppress their own feelings; they lie to customers, and are often mistreated. As many as half of the employees state that they regularly have to deal with troublesome or rude customers. This situation is even worse for women