Page 115 - The Disneyization of Society

THE DISNEYIZATION OF SOCIETY

less identical or whose products are served up through service transactions that
are more or less identical (as may be the case with fast food restaurants or retail
106 outlets). How else, the reasoning goes, might we distinguish flights between
New York and Chicago, other than through the quality of the flights, assuming
seat pitches or styles and safety are more less indistinguishable? The interface
between the attendant and the passenger, of which the emotional element – how
the passenger is treated – is crucial, becomes a major factor in terms of how the
service is perceived and received. Similarly, it is not the case that the quality of a
hamburger in a fast food restaurant is irrelevant, but given that there is frequently
little to distinguish one restaurant’s hamburgers from another, the quality of the
transaction, as evidenced in the way in which the service is delivered, is likely to
assume greater importance and significance than otherwise. In these cases, if
the service is a memorable one (or at least not memorably disappointing) the
customer is more likely to return.
One of the main ways in which emotional labour in service delivery has
diffused in relatively recent years is through customer care programmes. The greater
salience attached to emotional labour in work roles is related to a growing under-
standing of the importance of positive service encounters for the customer and of
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the influence of the frontline service employee on customers’ impressions. It can
also be seen as being very much associated with the related issue of the way in
which customer satisfaction is increasingly depicted by service firms as of para-
mount importance, because it is crucial to repeat business. For example, there is
evidence that as many as two-thirds of customers stop purchasing a service or
product because they are dissatisfied with the employee. 13 These considerations
have been important factors behind the growth of customer care programmes.
The customer nowadays is frequently described as ‘king’ (a principle also often
referred to as ‘consumer sovereignty’) and satisfying the king’s needs has become
of central importance to many organizations in the service sector. Of major
significance has been the growing impact of customer care programmes that have
been influenced by Total Quality Management (TQM) and the particular form
that it has assumed when applied to the service sector, namely, one of making the
satisfaction of the customer’s needs a central tenet of operations. 14 TQM in the
service sector has meant that the emphasis in the quality movement on ‘fitness
for use’ or ‘fitness for purpose’ was translated into a focus on ‘fitness for the
customer’. Satisfying the customer’s needs became a paramount concern. The
major impact of this orientation has been to make the frontline employee and
the service that he or she delivers the focal point of the quality revolution.
We can therefore see two related processes behind the diffusion of emotional
labour. First, customer care programmes, especially those influenced by TQM, are
predicated upon the principle of consumer or customer sovereignty, which
ascribes paramount importance to satisfying customers’ needs so that they will be
more likely to return. The quality of service delivery, of which emotional labour
is an important ingredient, therefore becomes crucial and is the main rationale for