Emotional Energy: When Customer Interactions Energize Service Employees

Journal of Marketing · 2025 · Volume 89 · Issue 1

Abstract

Existing literature has concluded that employees who regularly interact with customers often find this central aspect of their work emotionally draining. But what if some customer interactions could emotionally regenerate service employees? This 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, this study advances 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

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