Happy to help: State positive affect, state negative affect and affective ambivalence as predictors of emotional labor style and customer service performance.

摘要

Scope and method of study. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of state affect, positive, negative and ambivalent, on acting style and subsequently customer service performance during a negative customer service encounter over the phone. Subjects were 217 undergraduate students from a large Midwestern university.; Findings and conclusions. Results indicated that although acting style did influence customer service performance, state affect was not related to acting style. Furthermore, results indicated some direct relationships between affect and customer service performance. Specifically, findings showed that high levels of state positive affect experienced with low levels of state negative affect are most closely related to affective delivery (a performance indicator) while high levels of both types of affect is negatively related with affective delivery. Implications of these findings are discussed.