ABSTRACT
Emotional labor is “the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display” occurring in face-to-face or voice-to-voice interactions with customers (Hochschild, 1983, p. 7). Service workers who interact with customers over the phone, namely the call center workforce, do not need to directly manage the visual cues they communicate to customers. Rather, their focus is primarily on communicating appropriate emotions via vocal cues, which presents some unique challenges for performing emotional labor. In this chapter, we focus on the call center context to underscore the unique aspects of emotional labor in voice interactions. First, we present an overview of working conditions in call centers, and the role of emotional labor in call center work. Second, we examine how organizational factors, extra-organizational factors (i.e., customers), and individual factors such as personality, gender, and race influence emotional labor. Finally, we consider the consequences of emotional labor for the call center workforce and suggest future research directions.
