Service with a smile: A source of emotional exhaustion or performance incentive in call‐centre employees

• Author: Michel Cossette,Denis Morin,Karel Picard
• Date: 01 June 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/cjas.1413
• Published date: 01 June 2018

Service with a smile: A source of emotional

exhaustion or performance incentive in call-centre

employees

†

Karel Picard

Université du Québec à Montréal

Michel Cossette*

HEC Montréal

Denis Morin

Université du Québec à Montréal

Abstract

This study examines the relationships between emotional

labour (surface acting, deep acting, and natural expression

of positive emotions) and emotional exhaustion and service

performance among 215 call centre employees. Of the

hypotheses concerning the relation between the three

emotional regulation strategies to emotional exhaustion

and to service performance, only natural expression of

positive emotion is signif‌icantly related to both conse-

quences. Results also suggest that neuroticism moderates

the link between deep acting and emotional exhaustion:

employees with low levels of neuroticism seem more

emotionally exhausted when they use deep acting. Copyright

© 2016 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: emotional labour, natural expression of positive

emotions, emotional exhaustion, service performance,

neuroticism

Résumé

Cette étude vise à examiner la relation entre le travail

émotionnel (acting de surface et acting de profondeur, et

expression naturelle des émotions positives) et l’épuisement

émotionnel et la performance de service auprès de 215

employés de centre d’appels. Parmi les hypothèses reliant

les trois formes de travail émotionnel à l’épuisement

émotionnel et la performance de service, seule l’expression

naturelle des émotions positives est reliée signif‌icativement

aux deux conséquences. Les résultats suggèrent aussi un

effet modérateur du névrosisme entre la régulation de

profondeur et l’épuisement émotionnel: les employés ayant

un niveau faible de névrosisme seraient plus épuisées

émotionnellement lorsqu’ils adoptent l’actingde profondeur.

Copyright © 2016 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons,

Ltd.

Mots-clés : travail émotionnel, expression naturelle des

émotions positives, épuisement émotionnel, performance de

service, névrosisme

Call centres are business units intended to establish

close relationships with a company’s clientele (Holman,

2003). The position of customer-service representatives in

call centres requires considerable emotional involvement,

with employees exposed to routine and stressful tasks

(Taylor & Bain, 1999; Zapf, Isic, Bechtoldt, & Blau, 2003;

Zapf, Vogt, Seifert, Mertini, & Isic, 1999). Service agents

must provide quality service while regulating their own

emotions in order to express emotions that are aligned with

the organization (e.g., courtesy, friendliness, enthusiasm),

regardless of whether or not they genuinely feel those

emotions (Hochschild, 1983). Emotional labour is “the act

of expressing socially desired emotions during service trans-

actions”(Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993, pp. 88–89).

Some types of emotional labour taken on by em-

ployees result in more genuine service (Cossette, 2014).

Inauthentic emotional strategies, such as simulation or

emotional suppression (surface acting), have systematically

been linked to emotional exhaustion and emotional perfor-

mance issues in employees (Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011).

This study was conducted with f‌inancial support from the Fonds de

recherche du Québec –Société et culture (2014-NP-172746), provided to

the second author.

†This article was submitted and reviewed in French and translated after ac-

ceptance. Both the English and French versions are available online at

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1936-4490

*Please address correspondence to: Michel Cossette, Département de la

gestion des ressources humaines, HEC Montréal, 3000 chemin de la Côte-

Sainte-Catherine, Montréal, Québec, H3T 2A7 Canada. Email: michel.

cossette@hec.ca

Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences

Revue canadienne des sciences de l’administration

35: 214–227 (2018)

Published online 22 November 2016 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/CJAS.1413

Can J Adm Sci

35(2), 214–227 (2018)Copyright © 2016 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 214