Emotional Energy: When Customer Interactions Energize Service Employees

Julien Cayla and Brigitte Auriacombe ()
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Julien Cayla: NTU - Nanyang Technological University [Singapour]
Brigitte Auriacombe: EM - EMLyon Business School

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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.

Keywords: service work; ethnography; emotions; customer interactions; service encounters; consumer culture theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-01
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04604340v1
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Published in Journal of Marketing, 2025, 89 (1), 1-18 p. ⟨10.1177/00222429241260637⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04604340

DOI: 10.1177/00222429241260637

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