In today’s workplace many people have to display certain emotions as part of their daily jobs, regardless of how they actually feel. This phenomenon of ‘emotional labour’ occurs often, for example, in the work of flight attendants, call centre operators, sales staff and front-line bank employees. It can even extend at times to teachers or administrators.
Emotional labour is one aspect. But there are hep stores where customer service attitude is not ingrained in the employees. They take serving customer as a chore or burden, whereas they are there in the shop for serving customers. For example, if you are passing through a narrow passage in the shop and an employee is coming from the other side, a genuine customer service attitude would be to give way to customer. But in most of the shops, I have seen employees force their way before the customer even rubbing against the customer. Then there are employees who keep on standing in the corner and keep on chatting. They are not bothered if a customer needs their help or not. Giving customer space is one thing, but if that leads to not bothering at all, that is not customer service. The only exception I found where each and every employee was all smiles and caring was in ITC Hotel in Agra.
on Jul 2, 2013