Computers in Human Behavior 62 (2016) 658e665

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Computers in Human Behavior

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Full length article

Online customer service and emotional labor: An exploratory study

Kumi Ishii a, *, Kris M. Markman b
a
Department of Communication, Western Kentucky University, 1906 College Heights Blvd., Bowling Green, KY 42101, United States
b
Harvard Library, Harvard University, Gutman Library 245, 6 Appian Way, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The recent growth of service industries as well as the rise of e-commerce has increased the number of
Received 7 July 2015 online customer service workers. Research on face-to-face service work has shown that these workers
Received in revised form are expected to display certain emotions in the course of their work, a phenomenon known as emotional
19 April 2016
labor. However, little is known about emotional communication among online customer service workers.
Accepted 21 April 2016
Available online 28 April 2016
We explored emotional labor in an online context by examining the degree of emotional presence in
mediated service interactions and its relationship with workers' acting strategies (i.e., surface acting,
deep acting). Further, we examined if emotional presence and acting strategies predict job satisfaction as
Keywords:
Online customer service
well as burnout. Data collected from 130 online customer service workers indicated that they perceive
Emotional labor the highest emotional presence in phone conversations, followed by email and chat. Although there was
Emotional presence little relationship between emotional presence and acting strategies, those who engage in surface acting
Deep acting are less satisfied with their job and more likely to experience burnout. In addition, those who feel a
Surface acting higher degree of emotional presence over the phone tend to experience higher job satisfaction and less
burnout. These findings suggest that online customer service workers also engage in emotional labor.
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction these service workers engage in what is known as emotional labor

Recent Pew research reports that 89% of American adults use the
Internet, and 72% of now own a smartphone (Poushter, 2016). These
smartphone owners, particularly, young adults, are heavily
dependent to their mobile devices to go online in their daily lives
(Smith, 2015). The penetration of internet use in society is also
shown in another global survey, which reports that 55% of re-
spondents are interested in grocery shopping online (Nielsen,
2015). To respond to these online users, both traditional bricks
and mortar and online only retailers offer online customer service
options, such as real-time chat or email. Industry watchers note
that customer preference for phone support is dropping, while
email and chat are becoming more popular options (Klie, 2013). In
addition, both public and academic libraries have been increasing
their use of online patron services in the form of virtual reference
desks (Olszewski & Rumbaugh, 2010), which typically offer both
email and real-time chat options (Shaw & Spink, 2009).
Past research on face-to-face customer services has shown that
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: kumi.ishii@wku.edu (K. Ishii), kristine_markman@harvard.
edu (K.M. Markman).
(Hochschild, 1983), which refers to jobs that require the display of
specific emotions as a part of the job (Miller, 2015). These service
workers are typically required to suppress negative emotions and
display positive emotions when dealing with customers to achieve
organizational goals (Grandey, 2003; Groth, Henning-Thrau, &
Walsh, 2009). The rise in e-commerce has increased the need for
online customer service (Froehle, 2006; Jin & Oriaku, 2013), which
can provide customers with more flexibility while reducing costs
for organizations (Jin & Oriaku, 2013).
Despite the increase in the use of online customer service by
various types of organizations, extant research on emotional labor
has been predominantly conducted in face-to-face contexts, and
little is known about online workers. Early research on mediated
communication argued that the lack of nonverbal cues inherent in
the medium reduced the degree of social presence, which hindered
the expression of emotion (Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976).
However, later research suggested that the degree of social pres-
ence was subjectively determined by the user's involvement in
communication (Biocca, Harms, & Burgoon, 2003; Gunawardena &
Zittle, 1997). More recent research also suggests that emotional
content may be specifically difficult to interpret in online contexts,
particularly among strangers (as would be typically found in a
customer service encounter). For example, while people use

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.04.037
0747-5632/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 K. Ishii, K.M. Markman / Computers in Human Behavior 62 (2016) 658e665
various nonverbal cues (e.g., emoticons) to help express and
interpret emotion online (Derks, Fischer, & Bos, 2008), empirical
tests have revealed mixed results in the ability of senders and re-
ceivers to accurately encode and decode emotional content in text-
based mediated communication (Hancock, Landrigan, & Silver,
2007; Riordan, 2011). Despite these difficulties in online commu-
nication, the appropriate display of emotions is also critical for
online customer service workers. Thus, to fill a gap in past
emotional labor research, we conducted an exploratory study in
mediated contexts, specifically, among online and phone customer
service workers.
2. Literature review
2.1. Emotion in online communication
Social presence theory (Short et al., 1976) posited that text-
based mediated channels such as email were likely to be poor
conduits for emotional communication, primarily because of the
lack of synchronicity and nonverbal cues available when compared
to face-to-face communication. The theory identified social pres-
ence (i.e., a degree of salience of the other communicator) as a
property inherent in the medium used and argued that lower social
presence led to lower satisfaction among communicators (Cobb,
2011; Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997). However, later research such
as social information processing theory (Walther, 1992, 1995) sug-
gested that users can adapt to the constraints of the medium and
mediated channels, in particular, can support various types of
relational communication, including immediacy and affective
communication, over time. Derks et al. (2008) concluded that
overall there are numerous ways that both positive and negative
emotions are communicated via mediated channels. Riordan and
Kreuz (2010) found that although their participants generally
preferred face-to-face over email or instant messaging for
emotional communication, email was sometimes seen as having an
advantage, particularly for communicating negative emotions. For
example, the asynchronous nature of email was preferred for its
editing capabilities, and email was used to act as a shield against
negative emotions. The use of email for conveying negative emo-
tions is particularly relevant to the study of online customer service,
given that negative emotions are associated with the use of online
customer support (McLean & Wilson, 2016) and that complaints are
likely to make up a large portion of customer emails (Gupta, Gilbert,
& Di Fabbrizio, 2013).
2.2. Emotional presence
Because extant research has shown that users can adapt to the
lower-cue environment of mediated communication to conduct
successful relational and emotional communication, scholars have
refined the concept of social presence from definitions that focus on
a sense of being together, to definitions that revolve around psy-
chological involvement (Biocca et al., 2003; Lee, 2004). Biocca et al.
also warned against overly broad definitions of social presence and
argued that social presence is better conceived of as a phenome-
nological state (see also Lee, 2004), rather than a measure of a
medium. Biocca et al. stated, “the theory of social presence is likely
to be a theory of how differences in technological connection,
representations, and mediated access affect, distort, or enhance the
perception (mental model) of others' intentional, cognitive, and
affective states and behavior resulting from those perceptions” (p.
473). Thus, they found that social presence is a multidimensional
concept.
Supporting their view, several studies (e.g., Cleveland-Innes &
Campbell, 2012; Rourke, Anderson, Garrison, & Archer, 1999;
659
Shen & Khalifa, 2008) have identified emotional or affective pres-
ence as one dimension of social presence. However, much like the
variation in the definitions of social presence, definitions of
emotional presence differ among these studies. In particular, these
studies tend to base their definitions of emotional presence in the
context in which it is being examined such as in online learning
(Cleveland-Innes & Campbell, 2012; Rourke et al., 1999) or in online
communities (Shen & Khalifa, 2008). For the purpose of this study
we define emotional presence as the degree to which communi-
cators in a mediated context perceive they are engaging in
emotional communication with a real person.
Miller, Stiff, and Ellis (1988) noted two dimensions of empathy
in their emotional labor research: empathic concern (i.e., feeling for
the client) and emotional contagion (i.e., feeling with the client),
with emotional contagion also being associated with burnout.
Inherent in experiencing emotional contagion is the ability to
detect and respond to the emotions of others. Therefore, in exam-
ining emotional labor among online customer service workers, it is
critical to establish the degree of emotional presence perceived
over different communication channels, and we first ask:
RQ1. What extent of emotional presence do customer service
workers experience when using each communication channel?
As stated earlier, despite the assumption of social presence
theory (Short et al., 1976) Gunawardena and Zittle (1997) argued
that social presence inherent in the medium is less important for
communicators' satisfaction because the degree of social presence
can be increased by frequent interactions with the other commu-
nicator, which, in turn, positively affects the communicators'
satisfaction. Similarly, Lee (2004) suggests presence is related to
virtual experience. Based on these studies, we expect to see a
positive relationship between frequent communication and
emotional presence, and the following hypothesis is proposed:
H1. The frequency of communication with clients/customers will
contribute to the degree of emotional presence perceived in
mediated contexts.
2.3. Online customer service workers and acting strategies
As described earlier, the diffusion of advanced technology in
society has increased the need for online customer service (Froehle,
2006; Jin & Oriaku, 2013). Online services provide customers with
more flexibility, and for organizations, online services can reduce
costs (Jin & Oriaku, 2013).
Customer service workers are instrumental in influencing
customer satisfaction with the organization. For example, customer
satisfaction is positively related to their emotional experience with
these workers (Christoforou & Ashforth, 2015; Oliver, 1997). In
particular, a smile from customer service representatives produces
a higher level of customer satisfaction than no smile (So € derlund &
Rosengren, 2008). In addition, their positive emotions increase
customers' word-of-mouth intentions over time (White, 2010). For
these reasons, organizations select service workers based on their
personality traits such as extraversion (Tan, Foo, Chong, & Ng,
2003), and many organizations set rules about emotional display
to meet customers' expectations (Goussinsky, 2011; Kruml &
Geddes, 2000).
To conform to these rules, service workers use two strategies:
(a) deep acting and (b) surface acting (Kruml & Geddes, 2000). In
deep acting, workers attempt to modify their felt inner emotions to
meet organizational goals (Grandey, 2003; Groth, Hennig-Thurau,
& Walsh, 2009). In surface acting, workers fake their true emo-
tions (Groth et al., 2009) and modify their facial expressions
660 K. Ishii, K.M. Markman / Computers in Human Behavior 62 (2016) 658e665

(Grandey, 2003) accordingly. RQ2. Will the degree of emotional presence predict job satisfac-
While it is well documented that surface and deep acting stra- tion of online customer service workers?
tegies are used in face-to-face contexts, little is known about how
RQ3. Will the degree of emotional presence predict burnout of
customer service workers use these strategies when they perceive
online customer service workers?
emotions of customers in mediated interactions. Because past
research in negative contexts (e.g., service failures) showed that
online customer service representatives have to work harder than 3. Method
offline members to regain customer satisfaction and trust (Lii,
Chien, Pant, & Lee, 2013), it is anticipated that online workers This study was carried out using a web-based questionnaire. To
also use some acting strategies influenced by the levels of recruit participants customer service was defined broadly to
emotional presence. Thus, the following hypothesis is developed: include IT helpdesk work and librarian virtual reference work, in
addition to more traditional customer service sectors, such as retail.
H2. The degree of emotional presence will contribute to acting
Online customer service workers who use phone and/or other
strategies of online customer service workers.
communication media (e.g., email, chat) were invited to participate.
A variety of online channels were used to recruit a convenience
sample of participants, including Twitter, Facebook, and several
websites dedicated to sharing research opportunities. Participants
2.4. Outcomes from acting strategies
were also recruited through the personal networks of the
researchers.
Past studies indicated that deep acting strategies increased
personal accomplishments and a sense of authenticity (Brotheridge
3.1. Participants
& Lee, 2003) and were related to job satisfaction of customer ser-
vice workers, but the valence of the relationship with job satis-
Excluding 36 incomplete responses, the final usable data
faction was mixed across studies (e.g., Grandey, 2003; Medler-Liraz
included 130 participants. A majority (63.8%) were female (n ¼ 83),
& Yagil, 2013). Surface acting strategies, in contrast, were positively
and 26.2% were male (n ¼ 34) with 10% choosing not to respond to
related to job performance (Goodwin, Groth, & Frenkel, 2011),
the demographic questions. About half of them (49.2%) were 18e34
yet also consistently found to be negatively related to job satis-
years old, and the rest were 35 years old or older. About half of
faction (Blau, Bentley, & Eggerichs-Purcell, 2012; Matteson &
them (47.7%) were librarians, and the rest included customer ser-
Miller, 2013; Scott, Barnes, & Wagner, 2012). This, in turn, led to
vice members from the computer/IT industry (13.1%), banking/
stress (Chi, Grandy, Diamond, & Krimmel, 2011), burnout (i.e.,
financial services (3.1%), telecommunications (2.3%), healthcare
emotional exhaustion, reduced personal accomplishment, and
(1.5%), and others. Participants were generally evenly distributed in
depersonalization), and turnover (Blau et al., 2012; Goodwin et al.,
the amount of time they had worked in their current positions,
2011; Grandey, 2003; Matteson & Miller, 2013).
with 18.5% working less than one year, 26.2% one to three years,
Morris and Feldman (1996) suggested that job satisfaction and
18.5% four to six years, 7.7% seven to nine years, and 19.2% more
burnout are the important job-related outcomes of emotional labor.
than 10 years. Most of the respondents (n ¼ 105) worked 20 h or
In fact, these two have been studied as the essential outcomes in
more for their current position and close to half (48.5%) spent 51%
emotional labor research in face-to-face contexts (e.g., Blau et al.,
or more of their total work time dealing with customers/clients.
2012; Goodwin et al., 2011; Grandey, 2003; Matteson & Miller,
Over half of the respondents reported they are used face-to-face
2013; Scott et al., 2012). Thus, we focus on job satisfaction and
(n ¼ 67), phone (n ¼ 79), and email (n ¼ 67) with their clients/
burnout in this exploratory study. Despite the mixed results of the
customers daily. Only 29 people reported they used chat with their
effect of acting strategies on the valence of job satisfaction, these
clients/customers daily. While 62 participants reported never using
past studies in face-to-face contexts have shown that acting stra-
chat with clients/customers, only 12 reported never using email,
tegies were, indeed, related to both job satisfaction and burnout.
and seven reported never using the phone. Because close to half of
The literature suggests that mediated communication reduces
our participants worked in the same industry (library), we ran a
some inhibitions, which makes communication easier than directly
series of chi-squares to determine if librarians, as a group, were
facing uncomfortable situations (Keaten & Kelly, 2008), yet com-
significantly different in technology use, work experience, and
municators can be more aggressive in mediated settings than in
customer interaction from non-librarians. The results indicated
face-to-face contexts (e.g., Odac & Celik, 2013). Further, as
that librarians and non-librarians did not differ significantly on
described earlier, online customer service workers have to make
length of time in current position, number of hours worked per
more effort than face-to-face, particularly in post crisis situations
week, or on percentage of time spent dealing with clients/cus-
(e.g., Lii et al., 2013). Thus, these additional acting efforts by online
tomers. In addition, librarians and non-librarians did not differ
customer service workers would affect their job satisfaction and
significantly on the frequency of using email or phone to interact
burnout. We therefore advance the following hypotheses:
with clients/customers; however, they did differ on the use of chat,
H3. Acting strategies will predict job satisfaction of online with non-librarians being more likely to report not using chat, and
customer service workers. librarians being more likely to report using chat 1e3 times per
week, c2 (2, n ¼ 116) ¼ 22.52, p < 0.001.
H4. Acting strategies will predict burnout of online customer
service workers.
3.2. Measurements
Finally, although previous research has indicated that emotions
affect communicative responsiveness in face-to-face communica- 3.2.1. Emotional presence
tion and burnout of service workers (e.g., Miller, Birkholt, Scott, & There is no single widely accepted measurement of social
Stage, 1995; Miller et al., 1988; Snyder, 2012), the effect of presence (Biocca et al., 2003). For example, some measures include
perceived emotional presence on job-related outcomes among intimacy, and few studies have also looked at behavior as indicators
online service workers is unknown. Therefore, we pose the of perceived social presence. Similarly, the studies assessing
following questions: emotional presence also tend to use different scales, some of which
 K. Ishii, K.M. Markman / Computers in Human Behavior 62 (2016) 658e665
overlap with social presence scales. In addition, the existing social
presence scales are not specific (Biocca et al., 2003). Because of the
exploratory nature of our topic, and the lack of a single, established
measure for emotional presence, we created our own scale based
on past research. As discussed earlier, because emotional presence
is one dimension of social presence, we adapted three items from
the Social Presence Scale developed by Kreijins, Kirschner, Jochems,
and Van Buuren (2004) In addition, because the ability to detect
and respond to emotions is an important part of the burnout aspect
of emotional labor (Miller et al., 1988), we modified four items from
the Emotional Presence Scale used by Cleveland-Innes and
Campbell (2012) to address emotional communication directly.
Our modified items included a specific focus on the presence of
negative emotions because negative emotions have appeared to be
the predominant emotions expressed in customer service email
(Gupta et al., 2013). The participants answered these items for each
channel (phone, email, chat) with a 5-point Likert-type scale from 1
(strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).
After a reliability test for each channel, two items (i.e., When I
have a/an [CHAT, EMAIL, or PHONE] conversation with a client/
customer; I also feel that I deal with a very real person and not with
an abstract anonymous person, and [CHAT, EMAIL, or PHONE]
conversation with a client/customer can hardly be distinguished
from face-to-face conversation) were dropped. Cronbach's alpha
with the rest of five items was satisfactory for Email (a ¼ 0.70) and
Phone (a ¼ 0.72), but not for Chat (a ¼ 0.53). The final Emotional
Presence Scale for Chat (a ¼ 0.71) became two items (i.e., When I
have a chat conversation with a client/customer, I can easily tell if
he/she is angry or upset; I find it difficult to determine a client/
customer's emotional state when having a conversation via chat).
(See Appendix).
3.2.2. Frequency of mediated communication with clients/
customers
One question asked the frequency of communication with cli-
ents/customers with each channel (i.e., FtF, phone, email, chat,
other to specify) in a typical week. Participants answered using a 6-
point Likert-type scale from 0 (none), 1 (once a week), 2 (twice a
week), 3 (three times a week), 4 (four times a week), and 5 (daily).
3.2.3. Acting strategies
Similar to past studies, we investigated two types of acting
strategies: (a) surface acting and (b) deep acting. All items of these
acting strategies were answered by a 5-point Likert-type scale from
1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).
3.2.3.1. Surface acting. Surface acting was assessed by a modified
version of the Surface Acting Scale used by Diefendorff, Croyle, and
Gosserand (2005). The seven-item scale was a combination of five
items from Grandey's (2003) Surface Acting Scale and two items
from Kruml and Geddes' (2000) emotive dissonance scale. We
adjusted the wording for our participants by adding clients/cus-
tomers to their original scale, which indicated only customers.
Cronbach's alpha with our sample was 0.94.
3.2.3.2. Deep acting. Deep acting was assessed by a modified
version of the Deep Acting Scale used by Diefendorff et al. (2005).
Their scale was composed of three items adapted from Grandey's
(2003) Deep Acting Scale and one item adapted from Kruml and
Geddes' (2000) Emotive Effort Scale. Similar to surface acting, we
added clients/customers to their original Deep Acting Scale to
adjust for our participants. The modified scale also demonstrated a
good reliability (a ¼ 0.90).
661
3.2.4. Burnout
Burnout was measured using the Maslach Burnout Inventory
(MBI; Maslach & Jackson, 1981), which was adapted by Miller and
Koesten (2008). Their adapted MBI has three subscales including
(a) 10 items of emotional exhaustion (i.e., a general wearing down
from work), (b) 5 items of depersonalization (i.e., the tendency to
treat clients in cynical or depersonalized ways), and (c) 6 items of
reduced personal accomplishment (i.e., the feeling that little can be
accomplished on the job). Participants rated each item using a 5-
point Likert-type scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly
agree). Cronbach's alphas were 0.84 for emotional exhaustion; 0.79
for reduced personal accomplishment, and 0.82 for
depersonalization.
3.2.5. Job satisfaction
Job satisfaction was measured with a six-item scale, which was
originally developed from Price and Mueller (1986) and adapted by
Miller and Koesten (2008). Participants rated each item using a 5-
point Likert-type scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly
agree). Cronbach's alpha was 0.90.
3.3. Data analysis
A bivariate correlation analysis was first run to see the bivariate
relationship among all testing variables (see Table 1). RQ1 was
answered by the mean of each emotional presence. Because our
preliminary analysis showed the significant difference in the use of
chat among the participants (see the Participants' section for
detail), we focused on emotional presence in phone and email in
the following data analyses. H1 and H2 were tested by a bivariate
linear regression analysis respectively. To test H3 and H4 we ran a
series of multiple regression analyses of acting strategies (i.e., sur-
face acting, deep acting) for each dependent variable (i.e., job
satisfaction, emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced
personal accomplishment). To answer RQ2 and RQ3, we ran a series
of multiple regression analyses of emotional presence (i.e., phone,
email) for each dependent variable (i.e., job satisfaction, emotional
exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal
accomplishment).
4. Results
4.1. Degree of emotional presence
The result of descriptive analysis showed the mean of perceived
emotional presence was 3.23 (SD ¼ 0.85) for chat, 3.53 (SD ¼ 0.62)
for email, and 3.94 (SD ¼ 0.57) for phone. As noted earlier, the
overall use of chat by our participants was low and was significantly
different between librarian and non-librarian groups. Thus, chat
was dropped from the follow-up test. The result of a paired sample
t-test for emotional presence in phone and email was significant (t
(94) ¼ 6.55, p < 0.001).
4.2. Emotional presence and frequency of mediated communication
with clients/customers
Based on the results of bivariate correlation analysis (Table 1), a
predictive relationship between the frequency of communication
and perceived emotional presence was tested only for email. The
result was significant (t (97) ¼ 3.40, p ¼ 0.001, Adjusted R2 ¼ 0.10).
Thus, Hypothesis 1 was partially supported.
4.3. Emotional presence and acting strategies
The results of bivariate correlation analysis (Table 1) exhibited
662 K. Ishii, K.M. Markman / Computers in Human Behavior 62 (2016) 658e665

Table 1
Bivariate correlations among testing variables.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 M SD

1. Chat frequency e 0.18* 0.12 0.10 0.14 0.13 0.08 0.08 0.03 0.11 0.06 0.10 2.78 2.06
2. Email frequency e 0.16 0.09 0.33** 0.18 0.02 0.10 0.04 0.15 0.22 0.04 4.52 1.83
3. Phone frequency e 0.09 0.08 0.17 0.03 0.03 0.13 0.03 0.04 00 4.84 1.69
4. EP chat (a ¼ 0.71) e 0.34** 0.19 0.03 0.07 0.01 0.10 0.07 00 3.23 0.85
5. EP email (a ¼ 0.70) e 0.52*** 0.02 0.12 0.02 0.13 0.47*** 0.11 3.53 0.62
6. EP phone (a ¼ 0.72) e 0.21* 0.19 0.24* 0.22* 0.65*** 0.47*** 3.94 0.57
7. Surface acting (a ¼ 0.94) e 0.07 0.51*** 0.64*** 0.24* 0.54*** 2.83 0.99
8. Deep acting (a ¼ 0.90) e 0.23* 0.18 0.17 0.20* 3.20 0.86
9. Job satisfaction (a ¼ 0.90) e 0.70** 0.14 0.38*** 3.35 0.87
10. Exhaustion (a ¼ 0.84) e 0.12 0.40*** 2.76 0.68
11. Depersonalization (a ¼ 0.79) e 0.46*** 2.22 0.62
12. Reduced PA (a ¼ 0.82) e 2.47 0.81

Notes. *p < 0.05, **

p < 0.01, ***
p < 0.001, 2-tailed.

no significant association between emotional presence and deep
acting strategy. Based on the correlation results, emotional pres-
ence over the phone and surface acting strategy were forwarded to
a linear regression analysis. The result was significant (t
(98) ¼ 2.57, p < 0.05, Adjusted R2 ¼ 0.05), which rendered partial
support for Hypothesis 2.
4.6. Emotional presence and job satisfaction
The regression model for job satisfaction was marginally sig-
nificant (F (2, 84) ¼ 3.05, p ¼ 0.05, Adjusted R2 ¼ 0.07). Among the
models, emotional presence over the phone was the only signifi-
cant positive predictor of job satisfaction (b ¼ 0.29, p < 0.05).

4.7. Emotional presence and burnout

4.4. Acting strategies and job satisfaction
The result of a multiple regression analysis of acting strategies
for job satisfaction was significant (F (2, 100) ¼ 19.98, p < 0.001,
Adjusted R2 ¼ 0.27), but surface acting strategy was the only sig-
nificant negative predictor of job satisfaction (b ¼ 0.49, p < 0.001).
4.5. Acting strategies and burnout
A multiple regression analysis of acting strategies for burnout
showed the significant results for emotional exhaustion (F (2,
104) ¼ 39.12, p < 0.001, Adjusted R2 ¼ 0.42) and depersonalization
(F (2, 100) ¼ 22.17, p < 0.001, Adjusted R2 ¼ 0.29). The regression
model for reduced personal accomplishment was marginally sig-
nificant (F (2, 83) ¼ 3.08, p ¼ 0.05, Adjusted R2 ¼ 0.05). For acting
strategies, only surface acting was a significant positive predictor of
emotional exhaustion (b ¼ 0.63, p < 0.001); depersonalization,
(b ¼ 0.52, p < 0.001); and reduced personal accomplishment
(b ¼ 0.22, p < 0.05). (See Table 2).
The results of multiple regression analyses showed that all
burnout models were significant (F (2, 88) ¼ 3.14, p < 0.05, Adjusted
R2 ¼ 0.05 for emotional exhaustion); (F (2, 86) ¼ 16.01, p < 0.001,
Adjusted R2 ¼ 0.27 for depersonalization); (F (2, 70) ¼ 31.49,
p < 0.001, Adjusted R2 ¼ 0.47 for reduced personal accomplish-
ment). Likewise, emotional presence over the phone was the only
significant negative predictor of each of the burnout outcomes
(b ¼ 0.25, p < 0.05 for emotional exhaustion; b ¼ 0.59, p < 0.001
for depersonalization; b ¼ 0.56, p < 0.001 for reduced personal
accomplishment). Details of these regression analyses are pre-
sented in Table 3.
5. Discussion
The recent growth of service industries as well as the rise of e-
commerce has produced an increasing number of online customer
service workers. As discussed earlier, customer service work has
been identified as involving emotional labor. Because emotional
labor has been predominantly studied in traditional face-to-face
contexts, we examined communication among online customer

Table 2
Regression model for burnout and job satisfaction.

R Adjusted R2 DR2 F b t
***
Emotional exhaustion 0.66 0.42 0.43 39.12
(2, 104)
Surface acting 0.63*** 8.48
Deep acting 0.14 1.89
***
Depersonalization 0.55 0.29 0.31 22.17
(2, 100)
Surface acting 0.52*** 6.22
Deep acting 0.15 1.74
Reduced personal accomplishment 0.27 0.05 0.07 3.08þ
(2, 81)
Surface acting 0.22* 2.05
Deep acting 0.14 1.33
Job satisfaction 0.53 0.27 0.29 19.98***
(2, 100)
Surface acting 0.49*** 5.81
Deep acting 0.16 1.87

Note. þp ¼ 0.05, *p < 0.05, ***

p < 0.001.
 K. Ishii, K.M. Markman / Computers in Human Behavior 62 (2016) 658e665
Table 3
Regression model for burnout and job satisfaction.
R Adjusted R2
Emotional exhaustion 0.26 0.05
Emotional presence email
Emotional presence phone
Depersonalization 0.52 0.25
Emotional presence email
Emotional presence phone
Reduced personal accomplishment 0.69 0.46
Emotional presence email
Emotional presence phone
Job satisfaction 0.26 0.05
Emotional presence email
Emotional presence phone
Note., þp ¼ 0.05, *p < 0.05, ***
p < 0.001.
service workers to explore the ways that emotional labor plays out
in mediated service interactions. Although social presence theory
(Short et al., 1976) suggests that the lack of cues inherent in
mediated communication will make such communication less
effective, because of the reduced sense of social presence, the
theory has received criticisms for being too focused on character-
istics of communication media and for being overly broad and
abstract (Biocca et al., 2003; Lee, 2004). Following other researchers
(e.g., Cleveland-Innes & Campbell, 2012; Rourke et al., 1999; Shen &
Khalifa, 2008), we focused on one dimension of social presence,
emotional presence, as being more relevant to emotional labor and
online customer service work in that it may affect workers' abilities
to communicate effectively.
Online customer service workers in this study reported the
highest emotional presence for phone conversations, followed by
email and chat. In addition, emotional presence over phone was
significantly different from that of email. These results appeared
somewhat consistent with social presence theory (Short et al.,
1976). Similar to social presence, more nonverbal cues (e.g., tone
of voice) may contribute to a higher degree of perceived emotional
presence of the other communicator. However, social presence
theory would also predict that chat, as a synchronous channel,
would be rated more highly in presence than email, as an asyn-
chronous channel, which was not the case with our participants.
These results may be explained in part channel expansion theory
(Carlson & Zmud, 1999; D'Urso & Rains, 2008), which argues that
the richness (in terms of available cues) of a given medium is
partially a perception based on users' subjective experiences, rather
than being fixed by the characteristics of the medium. Given that
close to half of our participants reported never using chat with
clients/customers, their greater experience with email might lead
to them perceiving it to be higher in emotional presence than chat.
Further research with customer service workers who use email and
chat at similar rates is clearly warranted. In addition, we found that
while librarians and non-librarians were not significantly different
in their use of the phone or email, librarians were more likely to
report using face-to-face and chat to communicate with patrons
than were non-librarians. Given the growth of virtual reference
services (Olszewski & Rumbaugh, 2010) with multiple channels
(e.g., phone, email, chat), future research could examine how the
use of a range of channels for service work impacts the perception
of emotional presence and emotional labor.
We also tested how frequent communication over a particular
channel was related to the degree of perceived emotional presence.
A significant predictive relationship was found only over email
663
DR2 F b t
0.07 3.14*
(2, 88)
0.02 0.16
0.25* 2.06
***
0.27 16.01
(2, 86)
0.18 1.67
0.59*** 5.52
0.47 31.49***
(2, 70)
0.22 2.16
0.56*** 5.58
0.07 3.05þ
(2, 84)
0.09 0.76
0.29* 2.45
communication. While emotional presence in email was lower than
phone, frequent communication over this asynchronous channel
may be able to increase the degree of affective presence, as users
adapt to the medium (see Walther, 1992, 1995). There may be a
ceiling effect for emotional presence, such that the synchronous,
higher-cue environment of phone conversations does not benefit
from any increase in frequency of use. In addition, there was no
relationship between frequency of chat use and perceived
emotional presence over chat, which may be a result of the lower
numbers of participants who used chat. In order to better deter-
mine the effects of synchronicity, cues and experience on emotional
presence, we suggest that future research compare more text-
based asynchronous channels (e.g., discussion forums, email) to
synchronous (e.g., texting, chat) ones. Alternately, investigations on
the use of social media for customer service (e.g., Twitter, Facebook)
synchronously and asynchronously may also clarify this issue.
Emotional labor involves the expectation of workers to display
certain feelings (Miller, 2015). In particular, service workers are
strictly expected to show positive emotions toward customers
(Goussinsky, 2011) because it relates to customer satisfaction
(Oliver, 1997; White, 2010), and past studies discovered that these
workers use either surface acting or deep acting strategies to meet
their organizational rules (Kruml & Geddes, 2000). As the organi-
zational rules for customer satisfaction also apply to online
workers, we explored how online customer service workers actu-
ally use these two strategies, and how emotional presence are
related to these strategies in mediated communication. Our results
indicated that emotional presence over phone conversations with
customers negatively predicted surface acting, indicating that the
more emotionally present workers perceived their interactions to
be, the less likely they were to employ surface acting strategies.
Because customers can detect customer service workers' acting
behaviors (Groth et al., 2009), perhaps workers are anxious about
their customers, when they have a higher degree of emotional
presence, and they are more careful about acting over the phone
than other channels such as email and chat. This issue also needs
further attention in the future.
Our results demonstrated no significant relationship between
deep acting and the degree of emotional presence over any of the
communication channels we examined. A possible reason is that
deep acting may depend heavily on the contexts with which
customer service workers deal. For example, workers may need to
engage in deep acting behavior for customers in more personal
settings like health care. It appeared our participants do not require
deep acting strategies.
664 K. Ishii, K.M. Markman / Computers in Human Behavior 62 (2016) 658e665
We were also concerned about how acting strategies and
emotional presence would affect job outcomes typically associated
with emotional labor. Our results demonstrated that engagement
in surface acting leads to lower job satisfaction of mediated
customer service workers. More importantly, their surface acting
behaviors lead to burnout in terms of emotional exhaustion,
depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. These
results mirrored past studies in face-to-face contexts (e.g., Blau
et al., 2012; Goodwin et al., 2011; Grandey, 2003; Matteson &
Miller, 2013; Scott et al., 2012). Although we did not find any sig-
nificant results from their deep acting behaviors, the above results
from their surface acting behaviors showed that customer service
workers can also suffer negative outcomes when engaging in acting
through mediated communication. Similar to frontline service
workers in face-to-face contexts, online customer service workers
also experience burnout.
However, emotional presence in phone interactions leads to
opposite job outcomes, such that when online customer service
workers perceive more emotional presence over the phone, they
reported higher job satisfaction, and they were less likely to
experience all three dimensions of burnout. Similar to the media
characteristics approach (e.g., social presence theory, media rich-
ness theory), which argues that channels that have a high degree of
social presence or richness can handle more complicated issues,
perhaps, customer service workers can handle more difficult issues
over the phone than over email because they feel closer to the
customers. Thus, those who feel a higher degree of emotional
presence will experience more job satisfaction and less burnout.
Although this study did not specifically examine empathic concern
and emotional contagion, it may be that emotional presence is
related to empathic concern, such that online customer service
workers who perceive a higher degree of emotional presence over a
channel may also find it easier to develop the detached concern
that has been shown to have positive outcomes (Miller & Koesten,
2008; Miller et al., 1988, 1995; Snyder, 2012). Future research on
emotional labor in online contexts should examine how emotional
presence might fit with the other elements of the burnout model.
6. Practical implications
Despite this exploratory study, our findings indicated that or-
ganizations also need to pay attention to online workers because
they do engage in emotional communication with their customers
in a similar way to face-to-face contexts. Past face-to-face studies
exhibited that service workers show positive emotions when
customer demands (e.g., additional requests) are high (Tan et al.,
2003) and when customers behave aggressively (Goussinsky,
2011). These situations could occur in online contexts today, and
to conform to organizational policies, workers use acting strategies.
Skilled workers may be able to handle difficult situations very well,
yet our results showed their surface acting behavior generates
negative outcomes including burnout and job dissatisfaction.
Because skilled workers are the ones who can contribute to orga-
nizational success and, thus, they are the ones whom the organi-
zation wishes to retain (Goussinsky, 2011), organizational
management should provide support for these workers.
Although displaying positive emotions is one important skill of
service workers need to meet customers' expectations, a recent
study by So€derlund and Rosengren (2008) indicated that technical
service quality moderates the level of customer satisfaction. Thus,
organizations should also provide training to customer service
workers to increase their technical service quality. By improving
technical service quality, their acting behavior may be able to
produce positive outcomes. Recursively, we expect service workers
would display authentic positive emotions toward customers.
7. Conclusions
Similar to other studies, we acknowledge the limitations of this
study in interpreting the results. First, we recruited online
customer service workers via publicly available web sites, social
media, and personal networks and collected self-reported data via
an online survey questionnaire. In addition, our sample size of this
exploratory study was not large. Further, while some of our par-
ticipants claimed that they used all three communication channels
(e.g., phone, email, chat) when dealing with their customers, the
use of chat was much lower, limiting our outcomes testing to the
phone and email channels. All of these factors may have influenced
the validity of this study. However, it is more important that we
shed light on the emergent and critical area of emotional labor in
online customer service. The findings of this exploratory study
provided some evidence that online customer workers also engage
in emotional labor. Expanding emotional labor research into online
service contexts will provide benefits for workers in all types of
environments.
We see multiple avenues in this critical research area. First, we
looked into emotional presence as one important dimension of
social presence in this study. However, as discussed earlier, social
presence has multiple dimensions (Biocca et al., 2003). Thus, future
studies should further investigate other dimensions of social
presence among online customer service workers.
Second, we did not look at the relationship with customers, but
the duration or the frequency of the interaction with unpleasant
customers may exhibit differences in outcomes. More specifically, a
call center representative typically deals with an unpleasant
customer one time, whereas healthcare provider may need to
develop a long-term relationship even with such an unpleasant or
aggressive client (Dollard, Dormann, Boyd, Winefield, & Winefield,
2003). Thus, those who need to develop a long-term relationship
with an unpleasant client may always need to engage in acting
strategies, which may lead to burnout.
Third, the literature suggests that emotionally intelligent people
have a larger capacity to maintain positive emotions in times of
stress (Barrett & Gross, 2001). Indeed, higher emotionally intelli-
gent people produce better performance in the service fields
including real estates and insurance agencies (Kidwell, Hardesty,
Murtha, & Sheng, 2011). However, emotional intelligence studies
are also predominantly in face-to-face contexts, and little is known
about how emotional intelligence manifests in online contexts. As
such, this topic should also be studied in online contexts in the
future. If the positive relationship between emotional intelligence
and performance is also established in online contexts, the evi-
dence can suggest that emotional intelligence should be an
important selection criterion of online customer service workers.
Endnote
Websites and mailing lists where the survey was posted were:
http://www.reddit.com/r/SampleSize/, rusavr@ala.org, rss-l@ala.
org, rusa-l@ala.org
Appendix
The final emotional presence scale
When I have a (CHAT, EMAIL, or PHONE) conversation with a
client/customer, I feel that I deal with a very real person.
When I have a (CHAT, EMAIL, or PHONE) conversation with a
client/customer, I can easily tell if he/she is angry or upset.
I find it difficult to determine a client/customer's emotional state
when having a conversation via (CHAT, EMAIL, or PHONE).*
 K. Ishii, K.M. Markman / Computers in Human Behavior 62 (2016) 658e665
I find it easy to express sympathy with a client/customer when
having a conversation via (CHAT, EMAIL, or PHONE).
I find it difficult to help an angry or upset client/customer when
having a conversation via (CHAT, EMAIL, or PHONE).*
* relationships: the effects of psychological distance between service provider
The item was reverse-coded.
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