How to Manage Emotions in Airport Customer Services - Essay Example

How to Manage Emotions in Airport Services Airport service differs from other departments dealing with diverse groups and clients. In airports, customer service goes well beyond the basics, and they are always seeking new ways to improve it. Airport can be seen as a unique environment where emotional labor is taking place, and staff needs specific strategies to manage emotions and stress. Quality is defined by customers according to how well a product or service performs relative to their requirements. Customers now take the basics for granted and increasingly want a company to desire to help them, to treat them in a personal, caring way. In this case, stress management and control of emotions are the most important techniques which help employees to overcome negative feelings and increase customer satisfaction. The most global definition of emotion draws from systems theory, identifying emotion as a multiattribute process that unfolds over time, with the attributes unfolding at different rates (Paynee & Cooper 2007). Emotions attributes are manifest in multiple channels (experiential, physiological, expressive, cognitive, and behavioral), and the channels themselves are loosely coupled such that measures of different emotion attributes (such as self-report and physiological) may not correlate highly. Following McDonagh et al (2003): 'The cognitive, functionalist position on emotion posits that emotions serve an adaptive function. In this view, emotions are considered the mechanisms that signal when events go wrong" (p. 9). In airports, emotions influence the occurrence and course of altruism, creativity, learning and memory, social perception and interaction, social comparison, resource allocation, self-evaluation, moral reasoning, attraction and liking, attributions and expectations, judgment and decision making, self-regulation and coping, irrational beliefs, and rumination. In addition, emotion is directly relevant to understanding specific topics central to I/O psychology, such as job satisfaction, worker motivation, and understanding how job characteristics (such as personal control) contribute to important outcomes, such as productivity (Paynee & Cooper 2007). The interviews with Samuel Keiley, a customer service manager and Adam Marks, a . a receptionist, allow to identify the main problems and techniques used by airport HR department to manage emotions and stress. in the interview, Adam Marks admits that anger and aggression are the main feelings experienced by customer service during a day. Because the organizational environment is largely shared, situational effects cannot entirely explain aggression. Individual differences have an impact, a statement that is not only consistent with several theories of aggression but is also supported by considerable research. Many employees feel trait anger which means "the disposition to perceive a wide range of situations as annoying or frustrating, and the tendency to respond to such situations with more frequent elevations in state anger" (Reeve 2004, p. 76). When people high in trait anger encounter an ambiguous situation, their default interpretation is one of threat or attack. Also, the anger they feel tends to be more intense and may not easily dissipate. Also, the interviewees admit that impulsiveness is also a problem for many customer service employees. Low control is to act quickly without thought or concern for the future, reacting on emotions with little reflection. Mot of these reactions and situations are caused by clients who demand additional services or feel frustration or anger. In general, customer service employees constantly regulate their emotions and emotional expressions while interacting with customers. Hochschild (1983) mentions this form of work as having positive outcomes for the organization, but requiring effort from the employee that is often overlooked. Front-line service workers expend more effort when they have feelings that are incongruent with the friendly displays required of them. Thus, identifying the situations that create this dissonance and methods of coping with these situations may help with developing training modules and reduce stress of front-line employees. Hochschild's (1983) description of flight attendants pointed out the difficulty of providing personal service to every passenger- hundreds of them Gutek et al (2000) have proposed a specific dimension of high-contact service work that may influence the affective tone of the work. Frequent interactions with the public can be either service encounters, where the employee is unlikely to see that particular individual again, or service relationships, where the employee and customer interact regularly. Work motivation has been proposed to be different for the employee depending on whether the service is an encounter or a relationship. It is likely that a service relationship would assist employees in providing authentic expressions to customers they see regularly, provided they are on good terms with those people (Ashford et al 1996). Samuel Keiley, a customer service manager, explains the main technique and methods used by British Airways to manage emotions. Airport personal and management use different strategies to manage emotions and cope with stress. The main techniques involve emotional regulation and training, selection and situational modification. Emotional regulation can be either antecedent focused or response focused. As it applies to workplace aggression, antecedent-focused attempts try to prevent negative affect, particularly that of anger, from occurring, while response-focused attempts try to alter the physiological, experiential, or behavioral responses, particularly that of aggression, to the negative affect. There are two antecedent-focused categories (Ashford et al 1996). First, there is situation selection: individuals avoid situations expected to create an undesirable (or desirable) emotional response. In airports, employees might seek a transfer to another work team or department to avoid a coworker who incites anger. Second, there is situational modification: an existing situation is modified or adapted to control the emotional impact (Ashford et al 1996). Another useful strategy used by airports is cognitive change and response modification. Airport customer service employees may, for example, throw all their energies into their work to prevent becoming aware of the hostile situation. Within cognitive change, one reinterprets the situation so as to alter one's emotions. Employees who perceive hostility from a coworker may reframe the situation so that the hostility is considered amusing and ineffectual rather than anger eliciting. All of these forms of emotional regulation are considered antecedent focused because they intervene before the emotion is experienced. Finally, there is the response-focused strategy of response modulation: individuals attempt to influence the physiological, experiential, or behavioral responses to the emotion (Frost, 2003). For example, a receptionist who is feeling angry toward an unreasonable client can control his or her emotionally expressive behavior to avoid showing anger or behaving aggressively. Doubtless, these methods of emotional regulation are effective in preventing workplace aggression, but it is difficult to assess systematically to what extent. Most regulatory strategies have been studied only with regard to anxiety and depression, with very little consideration of anger and aggression. In addition, what work has been done has typically used child, clinical, or criminal populations- groups that may not generalize to the workplace. Finally, the use of emotional regulation strategies can be partially predicted by personality traits. Still, some researchers indicate that emotional regulation skills matter in controlling anger (Frost, 2003). With respect to the cognitive change category, those who respond intensely to negative stimuli tend to elaborate on the worst part of the event; they overgeneralize the event, as well as focus on how the event relates to themselves. At British Airways, championing the customer means one thing-creating optimum customer loyalty and value. The customer relations strategy now includes better customer knowledge and data distribution, reducing problems through teamwork, enhanced customer compensation, and an internal focus on effective means of customer retention (Frost, 2003). Training is seen as one of the most effective solutions to emotions management. Consequently, training takes a broad-based approach, using both antecedent-focused and response-focused strategies. At a minimum, any program should provide relaxation techniques as well as ones that reduce anger rumination. Grandey (2000) provides a good summary of theoretical approaches and practical techniques using such self-management methods that can provide a foundation for emotion management programs. Following Hochschild (1983): 'In-flight training program is perhaps the best in the industry. [it involves] assertiveness training course for flight attendants in which encounters with "problem" passengers were enacted." (p. 13, 16). Selection strategy (quality of staff strategy) allows airport management to reduce aggression among employees and employ only those people who are psychologically stable. Selection alone will not eliminate negative emotions from the workplace. For many employees, emotional self-regulation training is an option for reducing workplace aggression. Many companies are already acknowledging this and, with increasing frequency, provide training designed to help employees handle or manage their emotions (McDonagh et al 2003). Available programs are quite varied, ranging widely in the skills trained as well as workplace conditions for their implementation. Some programs emphasize the role of cognitive components involved in aggressive acts (such as getting employees to think about their reactions and behavior), and others emphasize the role that affect and emotions play in aggression. For example, Frost (2003) outlines several interventions, each specific to different stages in an episode of violence. At the organizational level, there are several steps in preventing workplace aggression, with the initial one being assessment. Preferably, this can be determined by surveying employees regarding the frequency with which they initiate or are the recipients of different aggressive acts that range in severity (McDonagh et al 2003). More typically, companies assess only employee attitudes or job dissatisfaction, though these can still serve as more distal indicators of aggression in the workplace. If there is a significant amount of hostility, either observed or felt, then it is necessary to determine its source. We have already discussed typical culprits, such as organizational justice, a climate permissive of aggression, and job stress, though any work environment feature that leads to aversive events or negative affect may be a cause. Finally, once an unacceptable work feature has been identified in sufficient detail, an appropriate intervention should be undertaken (Furnham, 2008; Ashford et al 1996). For example, given an excessively permissive climate for aggression, organizations should institute a formal policy declaring their intolerance of workplace aggression, find ways of effectively informing employees of this policy, and determine how they will enforce it. The presence of these policies and perceptions of behavior-outcome contingencies may create a strong organizational climate that reduces workplace aggression and violence by addressing situational precursors to negative emotions (McDonagh et al 2003). Service workers have frequent interactions with customers when they are expected to show positive displays, and they have little autonomy over their expressions and the situation. In the ideal situation, these job characteristics contribute directly to engaging in affective service behaviors (smiling) and experiencing positive affective events likely if the employee is a good fit for these demands (Aquino et al 1999). Two externally focused emotion regulation tactics are situation selection and situation modification, whereby individuals choose or modify their interactions with people and places in ways that may maximize the pleasantness of the experience and thus regulate their emotional state (Ashford et al 1996). Situational modification is a regulatory strategy that works by changing a potential emotion-eliciting situation, thus having an impact on the link between job characteristics and affective events. This category resembles active problem-focused coping, which attempts to change the situation. For example, a customer service employee may talk with a difficult person to keep a stressful event from happening in the future or may arrange the work schedule to avoid interacting with certain people. This strategy is preventative and antecedent focused by attempting to change the situation to avoid the evocation of certain emotions (Ashforth & Humphrey 1995). While situational modification such as directly confronting an individual may be suitable for dealing with coworkers or others with similar organizational power, this may be less feasible for interactions with customers. Modifying the situation in order to avoid such acute events may be difficult in settings where "the customer is always right" or there is little chance for problem solving or in-depth discussion whereby the interaction can be improved. In such cases, workers may hide in the back room when certain customers approach (regulating by situation selection), thus lowering their availability to customers (Bailey & McCollough 2000). Particularly in customer interactions, the script for what is said, done, and expressed may be so explicit that changing that particular encounter is either impossible or highly discouraged. In fact, coping studies have found that problem-focused coping predominates when stressful conditions are viewed as controllable by action, and emotion-focused coping (internal emotion regulation) is prevalent when conditions are viewed as hard to change. The affective events of interpersonal conflict, incivility, and injustice require emotion regulation because they arouse negative emotions that do not fit the display rules of the job and may occur with people with whom there may be high costs due to the power differential (customers) if true feelings are shown. Emotional arousal can interfere with performance, taking precedence above cognitive and social processes (Ashford et al 1996). The technique of attentional deployment refers to a broad category also known as cognitive refocusing. Another identified technique of attentional deployment that customer service representatives may use is disengagement, or detachment. Here, rather than changing feelings by actively thinking about more positive events (as in distraction) or about the emotional event itself (rumination), the employee may try to regulate emotional reactions by cognitively distancing herself from her feelings or the situation (Basch & Fisher 2000). Examples of such practices may be attempting to think of nothing at all, mentally switching off, waiting passively for something to change, or engaging in the wishful thinking that things would be different. Some researchers have studied humor as a way of regulating negative emotions in the workplace. Humor, or making light of the situation, may act to distance the individual from the situation and has been discussed as a technique of caring professionals who deal with life-or-death situations. However, in the customer service setting, the use of humor during a negative work encounter could be potentially detrimental to the service interaction if the customer felt the employee was mocking him or her (Bailey & McCollough 2000). Cognitive change is another example of internally focused emotion regulation as a response to affective events. As stated by early theories of emotions and stress, how individuals evaluate a situation, rather than the objective situation itself, influences the emotions felt. Primary appraisal consists of deciding whether the event is personally relevant to the individual and his or her goals, resulting in positive or negative emotion states. Secondary appraisal consists of determining blame or credit attributions and evaluating coping resources, which result in more specific emotional states. However, if that same event has uncertain meaning and an individual cannot necessarily tell what is going to happen or what should be done about it, anxiety may occur (Cortina et al 2001). For example, a customer service representative who has just been yelled at by her supervisor may appraise the situation in several ways. She may reevaluate this situation to dull her negative reaction, perhaps deciding that her supervisor was having a bad day and could not totally be held accountable for this unfair response. Appraising them in this way would minimize anger and aggressive tendencies, thus helping the employee to cope with the work situation effectively (Furnham, 2008). In response-focused emotion regulation, the individual manipulates the expression of emotion by influencing physiological or behavioral responses to the event. Individuals can modify the physiological tension that accompanies anger and anxiety and suppress or hide expressions from public viewing. Physiological modification is the attempt to regulate one aspect of emotional responding: the physiological arousal state (Reeve, 2004). There are several ways this can be accomplished. Removal from any social interaction for a brief period (a "time-out") allows an arousal state to have a chance to return to baseline levels (Payne & Cooper 2007). For example, a call center for an international phone company requires fifteen seconds to pass between every call before the next one is allowed through the queue. Another technique used to regulate the body's arousal is the intake of chemicals. A regular smoker may take a smoke break (the nicotine calms anxiety rather than stimulating the individual if they are already addicted), others may drink coffee to improve positive mood, or they may attend happy hours where alcohol is served. In addition to the physiological effects on emotion regulation, these functions are often socially embedded, providing the opportunity for social support (Reeve, 2004). In the customer service setting, these approaches may be commonly used to interact with customers and meet the display rules of the job. Hochschild (1993) identifies the situation which causes anger and frustration to one of the employees. A supervisor "gets openly angry at her more often than he does at a male equal or superior, and more often than she does at him" (p. 172). In this case, the effectiveness of response modulation by faking expressions has been tested with multiple outcome variables. Enhancing expressions or putting on a smile should have positive effects. Not only are these positive expressions to be maintained across time and customer situation, but they also should be authentic and sincere expressions (Payne & Cooper 2007). The assumption made is that if the employee is smiling and being genuinely friendly, these positive expressions will be "caught" by the customer, who will then form a positive impression of the establishment. Support for the idea of emotional contagion has been demonstrated in actual service settings. Others have also found that positive expressions relate to customer service outcomes such as customer satisfaction, tips, and sales. Positive displays and service outcomes provides a rationale for the enforcement of display rules but has typically ignored the true feelings and emotion regulation that service representatives need. In fact, researchers suggest that just the emotional display rules of the job act as a work stressor by controlling (McDonagh et al 2003). In sum, effective management of emotions becomes important for airline industry and airports. So, it becomes crucial for management to maintain viability and recognize the difficulties facing service representatives in maintaining the customer's positive impression. In settings such as customer service, understanding the events that create negative emotions and the ways in which it is effective to cope with these emotions is crucial for both service performance and employee well-being. This effect suggests that customer service representatives who show positive expressions at work should be very happy employees. This is overly simplified, as more recent tests of this facial-feedback effect have shown. When individuals are aware of the source of their expressions, this effect has been found to diminish. Thus, managing expressions should not be effective for employee stress management or service delivery. Bibliography 1. Aquino, K., Lewis, M., & Bradfield, M. 1996, Justice constructs, negative affectivity, and employee deviance: A proposed model and empirical test. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 20, 1073-1091. 2. Ashforth, B. E., & Humphrey, R. H. 1995, Emotion in the workplace: A reappraisal. Human Relations, 48, 97-125. 3. Ashford, N., Stanton, H. P. M. Moore, C. 1996, Airport Operations. McGraw-Hill Professional; 2 edition. 4. Bailey, J. J., & McCollough, M. A. (2000). 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