EXPRESS: Emotional Energy: When Customer Interactions Energize Service Employees

Abstract

Existing literature suggests that employees who regularly interact with customers often find this central aspect of their work emotionally draining. Our findings provide a striking contrast by highlighting customer interactions that are not only pleasurable but that also manage to emotionally regenerate frontline service employees. Our ethnographic research demonstrates that several factors influence emotional energy in service interactions, including staff copresence with customers, mutual focus, shared mood, and barriers to outsiders. In addition, service employees’ experience of autonomy and status in interactions plays an important role in influencing their emotional energy. Based on these insights, we design a framework for service organizations to manage a crucial asset: the emotional energy of frontline service employees.