Emotional Behavior with Its Influence on Customers in the Hospitality Sector - Brighton Jetty Cafe - Case Study Example

hospitality industry assignment Student’s Name: Course Code: Tutor’s Name: Date of Submission Executive summary This report analyzes the concept of emotional behavior with its influence on customers in the hospitality sector. Staffs in the hospitality industry employ emotional labor by displaying what the customer desires in the process of delivering their services. A staff can be experiencing other emotions but in the working situation usually exercise emotional labor by displaying organizational emotions. I visited Brighton jetty café and saw that emotional labor was being demonstrated by the employees through modifying their inner feelings as well as their facial expressions to match the customer’s desired response. This behavior of the employees was found to play a significant role in attracting customers as they felt welcome and satisfied when in the café. It was also evident labor emotions helped so much in delivering a positive experience, but the workers needed to be encouraged frequently to make them maintain their performance in satisfying the customers. The report has shown how fine dining in Brighton jetty café made their customers satisfied due to employment of emotional labor. Other scholars’ contribution into labor emotions have been analyzed by the report and the necessity of emotional labor in the hospitality industry have been shown clearly with the reference of Brighton jetty café. Table of Contents Executive summary 2 Table of Contents 3 Introduction 4 Literature review 4 Discussion 5 Initial impression 5 Brighton jetty café 5 Importance of emotional labor 7 Consequences of emotional labor to employees 7 Recommendations 8 Conclusion 8 References 10 Introduction This report analyzes emotional labor as a process employed by workers as they manage their emotions and feelings with respect to rules and regulations that are defined organizationally in the Brighton jetty café. Wide contributions by scholars on emotional labor have been identified and analyzed by the report in the attempt to understand its application in Brighton jetty café. The report analyzes and draws discussions with respect to workers at Brighton jetty café where I visited for to dine. The nature of hospitality received will be discussed as well as my prior expectations compared with my experience from the reality seen during the visit. Different concepts of emotional labor will be considered and their relationships showing their influence on customers satisfaction. The report shows how emotional labor benefits the Brighton jetty café in their food business as well as entertaining their customers in the various activities carried out in the beach café. There will be recommendations on how Brighton jetty café can increase the role of emotional labor to increase the customer’s satisfaction and help to deliver services of higher quality to their customers. Literature review Individuals in the business world have to deal with emotions in their daily activities as they sell their products as well as deliver their services. In organizations that sell their services, workers are required to show positive emotions as they deal with customers and try their best to suppress their negative emotions (Ashforth & Tomiuk, 2000). The concept of emotional labor was created by Arlie Hochschild in 1983 to explain the things that service workers do and which are more than their physical or psychological duties (Mehmetoglu & Engen 2011). Lee & Ok (2013) says that emotional labor is the expression and regulation of emotions that are desired in an organization with the purpose of fulfilling the emotions that are required in the organization. There are two methods used by workers to manage emotions while in the working environment. They include deep acting as well as surface acting. Employees must regulate their emotions in the process of interacting with their coworkers, managers as well as customers for an organization to achieve its goals and objectives (Ashkanasy, Härtel & Zerbe 2000). Surface acting involves pretending or faking an emotion using artificial facial expressions, body language as well as talking. It is also associated with lowering of tone and smiling for the purpose of hiding a real emotion or showing an emotion that does not exist (Ashkanasy, Härtel & Zerbe 2000). When using deep acting, workers will tend to control their internal emotions which direct them to believe that they are happy and they are enjoying the interaction (Ashkanasy, Härtel & Zerbe 2000). This makes emotional labor effective to pass a positive customer experience. In the hospitality industry, workers are supposed to suppress their own emotions and engage in displaying feeling that can make others especially the customers to fell welcomed and wanted (Tews, Stafford & Michel 2014). Employees need to be trained for them to avoid emotional dissonance which is experienced due to the conflicting feelings; the actual and the displayed for an organization to achieve its goals. Discussion Initial impression Brighton jetty café is a restaurant with a fantastic location with the panoramic views across the Brighton’s iconic sea front. Workers start their day at 9.00 AM until 8.00 PM. The environment around the beach café is welcoming and cool for dining and meeting with family members and friends. It also has a cocktail lounge upstairs that services both dining and non-dining guests. I had very positive impressions of the café prior to my visit due to what I had heard from friends who were frequent visitors of the café. The reports that I was getting was about very nice sea food which featured heavily on the menu and other vegetarians menus from A La Carte. I had heard about chic décor and stylish features, with sleek marble surfaces, tasteful banquette seating and bespoke lighting features, creating a fantastic impression. With the assurance from my friends, I decided to visit the café. Brighton jetty café The café located in outer south Adelaide was very busy that afternoon and there was no booking due to its popularity. I had prior information of long queues as customers waited to be served. There was no window table as I arrived and I was warmly welcomed by one of the front employee who was very kind and nice to me. With the concept of emotional labor in mind I could tell that this worker was deep acting to make me feel welcome and happy. Emotional labor was being applied by most of the workers I encountered in the café. According to Vans, Smith & Cooper (2011), “Emotional labor is the management of emotional display by staff to satisfy organizational expectations during interpersonal interactions”. In the hospitality industry like in Brighton jetty café workers had to suppress their real feeling and put on emotions that would make customers satisfied. For a hospitality firm to deliver quality services and increase its competitive advantage, service employees are of great importance in meeting the demands of customers (Shani, Uriely, Reichel, and Ginsburg 2014: 151). This was evident in Brighton jetty café since however the café looked busy, the first employee to encounter took time to make feel comfortable and explained to me that I had to wait for some few minutes as my order was being prepared. The young man displayed a calm and welcome emotion that was surely in conflict with his authentic or experienced feelings of stress and pressure due to the busy nature of the restaurant through the use of ‘surface acting’ or ‘deep acting’ (Shani, Uriely, Reichel, and Ginsburg 2014: 151). As I waited, one of the waiters encountered an unhappy customer who had received what he had not ordered. He used surface acting to maintain a calm posture despite the ranting’s from the customer. He apologized in a friendly manner and advised them to wait for some few minutes as he went downstairs to solve the issue. After about three minutes the waiter was back with the customer’s order still apologizing. The same waiter approached my table and asked me politely to take my order and with a complete different emotions from what he had just encountered. According to me, use of surface acting appeared to us the customer to have had no negative impact on her display of emotion, suggesting the direct employment of emotional labor. Other waiters and waitresses in the café empathized with various customers either for lateness in order delivery or for changes in tables. This was a clear demonstration of deep acting as they tried to internalize the feeling of the customers and make them feel comfortable with the situation. They appeared to place themselves in customers’ shoes to display an emotion of empathy and make the customers feel that they were also impacted by the slight delays experienced by the customers or the changes. Once the customers showed satisfaction, their display of emotion quickly changed and their relief was evident, displaying what appeared to be almost genuine emotion in suggesting that they also enjoyed. Emotional Labor was evident in all my interactions during my experience. All the service staff members were friendly, prompt, as well as welcoming and particularly well groomed in making the customer feel special and as if they were a part of the staged experience. Lee & Ok (2013, p. 6) argues that service staff are required to remain friendly and polite in unpleasant situations, such as incensed customers or frantic work pace, that would normally give rise to negative feeling reactions. All staff members were able to apply the concept of emotional labor to ensure that the experience was positive and rewarding for the customer. Having a considerable amount of experience working in the hospitality industry I could see how hectic the restaurant was and the level of demand that the service staff were under, however at no stage did any of the staff display any negative impact of this and it made the experience seem controlled and fun despite its busy nature. Importance of emotional labor The hospitality industry has emerged to be very competitive nowadays. Every firm in the industry must try to make their customers satisfied with the aim of retaining them as well as attracting others (Wong & Wang 2009). Emotional labor helps in making the customers feel special as they visit a hospitality firm and would like to visit the place another time. This means that a firm that uses emotional labor has a more competitive advantage than the ones which do not employ the concept (Van, Smith & Cooper, 2011). Consequences of emotional labor to employees Most of the workers who use emotional labor usually fake feelings to please the customers. This means that the feelings displayed are not the actual emotions with the worker. Due to continued surface acting as well as deep acting an employee can experience emotional conflicts leading to emotional dissonance (Shani, Uriely, Reichel & Ginsburg 2013). This is basically the conflict between the real experienced feelings and the emotions expressed. These workers are likely to be having a sense of unease unless proper counseling and training is given to them. The employees also experience emotional disharmony as a result of emotional deviance. This is the difference between the expected and the displayed emotions (Zapf 2002). Recommendations It is recommendable for Brighton jetty café to consider the following areas which can assist them in enhancing and maintaining the quality of the services they give to their customers. Organizational policies as well as policies are supposed to be laid down in such a way that the employees are motivated to deliver their services effectively. According to Anderson, Chappel, Provis & Tourism (2002) customer satisfaction can be enhanced through the following ways. Adequate training: Areas in which consideration for training of current and new staff should include elements that focus on effective communication and conflict resolution skills so as to minimize cases of emotional dissonance among the employees. Proper employee Selection: criteria for selection should consider the personality as well as interpersonal skills of new employees, in a manner that is conducive to the enhancement of service delivery and that are in line with the skills and personalities that are already employed. Good organizational culture: a supportive environment in which workers can share experiences with managers and co-workers to help them cope with the challenges of customer service work and in turn display a more consistently welcoming attitude toward customers. Conclusion The hospitality industry is growing at a high rate in the today world. It is the work of the management of firms in these firms to attract as many customers as possible as they retain the old ones. This makes them to use emotional labor where employees try to show the feelings that will make customers satisfied with the services. Different scholars and researchers have tried to analyze the concept of emotional labor and it has been found to be beneficial to numerous hospitality firms all over the world. It has been found that employees can use surface acting as well as deep acting where the employees try to show their customers the best out of the organization. Brighton jetty café is a hospitality organization in Adelaide South Australia where workers try to make their employees special whichever the cost using emotional labor. The waiters and waitresses in the café put on feeling that customers will find welcoming. Application of the emotional labor concept can have negative consequences on the employees as they try to balance the actual feelings and the displayed ones. To prevent this basing Brighton jetty café as example, employees should be given proper training as well as being selected well together with a good organizational culture between managers and employees. References Anderson, B, Chappel, S, Provis, C & Tourism, CR 2002, The recognition and management of emotional labor in the tourism industry, CRC for Sustainable Tourism, Gold Coast, Qld. Ashforth, B. E & Tomiuk,M. A 2000, Emotional labor and authenticity: views from service agents. In Fineman, S. (Ed), Emotions in organizations, Sage, Thousands oak. Ashkanasy, N. M., Härtel, C. E & Zerbe, W. J 2000, Emotions in the workplace: Research, theory, and practice, Westport, CT., Quorum Books. Lee, J & Ok, C 2013, 'Examination of Factors Affecting Hotel Employees' Service Orientation: An Emotional Labor Perspective'. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, vol. 20, No. 10, pp. 1-32. Mehmetoglu, M & Engen, M 2011, 'Pine and Gilmore's Concept of Experience Economy and Its Dimensions: An Empirical Examination in Tourism'. Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 237-255. Shani, A, Uriely, N, Reichel, A & Ginsburg, L 2013, 'Emotional labor in the hospitality industry: The influence of contextual factors'. International Journal of Hospitality Management, vol. 37, pp. 150-158. Tews, M. J., Stafford, K & Michel, J. W 2014, Life happens and people matter: Critical events, constituent attachment, and turnover among part-time hospitality employees. International Journal of Hospitality Management, Vol. 38, pp. 99-105. Van, PA., Smith, LD & Cooper, BK 2011, ‘Are you for real? An evaluation of the relationship between emotional labor and visitor outcomes'. Tourism Management, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 39-45. Wong, J & Wang, C 2009, Emotional labor of the tour leaders: An exploratory study. Tourism Management, Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 249-259. Zapf, D 2002, Emotion work and psychological well-being. Human Resource Management Review, Vol. 12, No. 2 pp.237-268. Appendices Appendix I: photo of the upstairs dining area. Appendix 2: Part of Menu, physically collected from the café. Read More