Services Marketing

Assignment

Submitted by-
Rabia Monga
18IB343

a) Write a brief note (Min250-Max300 words) on ‘Emotional Labour in Services Marketing’.

Ans. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild coined the term “emotional labor” to refer to the labor that goes
beyond the physical or mental skills needed to deliver quality service. It involves the service employees
to display expected emotions during the service encounters by aligning their emotions with that desired
by the organisation.

Emotional labor occurs in those jobs that involve voice-to-voice or face-to-face interactions often and in
such jobs employees must manage and modify their own emotions, while attempting to manage the
emotions of the customers. It is basically managing and modifying feelings and emotions to fulfill the
meotional requirements of a job. A service employee who is having a bad day is expected to put on the
face of the organisation when dealing with customers.

There are two forms of emotional labor. One is surface acting, wherein the employees pretend to feel
emotions that are not there and also include supressing of felt emotions. The other one is deep acting,
wherein the employees have to direct, modify and align their emotions and convince themselves not to
give a negative reaction.

The manner in which the emotions are displayed by the service employees has a strong impact on the
quality of the service being provided by him. Emotional labor involves showing a genuine concern for
customers' needs, smiling, and making positive eye contact and all these are critical to a customer's
perception of service quality. Thus, customer’s perception of the service quality is influenced by how the
service employee expresses his/her emotions in service interactions.
 b) Interview a frontline service provider in a service organization of your choice. Find out the
stresses he experiences in his job. What emotional labour does he have to put in, in your
opinion?

Ans. Mr. Naveen Kumar is a waiter at a restaurant, Punjabi Nature. His job involves daily interacting face
to face with the customer, greeting them, taking orders etc. After interviewing him, I came to know how
he has to deal with customers and how he uses emotional labor daily while interacting with them. Mr
Naveen often has to deal with rude customers and instances have happened wherein the customers
have misbehaved with him. At that time, because he represents the restaurant, he very politey and
respectfully dealt with those customers. He surpressed his emotions of anger and insult and used
emotional labor by being courteous. There have been many instances wherein he was having a bad day
yet he would greet the customers with a pleasant smile and entertain them completely. Once, his family
member was hospitalised for a major surgery, yet he showed up at work and with a smile greeted and
attended all the customers. He very well knows how to use emotional labor effectively.