Customer Expectations of Employee Emotional Labour in Service Relationships

Emotional labor has been defined by Hochschild (1983) as “the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display” (p. 7, 1983). Many jobs contain an emotional component that goes beyond the normal burden on feelings caused by work and thus require “emotional labor”. Hochschild (1983) distinguished between two approaches available to the emotional laborer - surface acting and deep acting. This thesis examines the relationships between employee emotional labour (Hochschild, 1983), customer perceived interaction quality and customer intention to continue the private banking service relationships. It also tests the mediating effects of customer expectations of emotional labour on the relationship between employee emotional labour and customer perceived interaction quality. Dyadic data was generated from customer-relationship manager pairs involved in private banking service relationships. Key findings demonstrate that employee deep acting relates positively with customer perceived interaction quality; however, employee surface acting does not relate negatively. At a more specific level, the greater the customer expectations of deep acting - the more positive the relationship between employee deep acting and customer perceived interaction quality and the more negative the relationship between employee surface acting and customer perceived interaction quality. The lower the customer expectations of surface acting, the more positive the relationship between employee deep acting and customer perceived interaction quality. Higher levels of customer perceived interaction quality then relate positively to the customer intention to continue the service relationship. This work helps simultaneously explore the flow of emotional labour from employees to customers and helps understand the service relationship holistically. Findings establish the importance of emotional labour and how it influences customers’ perception of their interactions. This knowledge is useful in building sustainable and fruitful service relationships for the benefit of the customers, employees and organizations