The impact of emotional labor strategy order effects on customer satisfaction within service episodes

Purpose This paper aims to aims to extend emotional labor research by exploring whether the impact of emotional labor on customer satisfaction depends on the order in which different emotional labor strategies are used by employees. Specifically, the authors explore how the order effects of two emotional labor strategies – deep and surface acting – impact customer satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted two experimental studies in which participants interacted with service employees who systematically switched between surface and deep acting strategies during the service episode. In Study 1, participants watched a video clip depicting a service encounter in a bookstore. In Study 2, participants partook in a simulated career-counseling session. Findings The four different emotional labor strategy order effects differentially impact customer satisfaction. Consistent with theories of gain–loss effects, improvement and decline trends positively or negatively impact customers, respectively. Furthermore, results show that these trends impact customer satisfaction growth differently over time. Research limitations/implications The authors only focused on two emotional labor strategies, and future research may benefit from extending the research to additional regulation strategies and/or specific discrete emotions. Practical implications The results suggest that managers may train employees in recognizing that customer satisfaction is not just driven by customers’ overall assessment of the interaction but also by their experience at different stages of the interaction. Originality/value Service marketing and management scholars have largely explored emotional labor from a between-person or within-person perspective, with little empirical attention paid to within-episode processes that focus on how employee behavior varies within a single service episode. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to demonstrate that surface and deep acting can be used simultaneously and dynamically over the course of a single service interaction in impacting customer satisfaction.