The key to the success of any business transaction is customer satisfaction. A customer always demands the best service and in return offers the company his loyalty. The key to this; great customer service. Smile at the customer, speak to them in a polite tone and adapt your body language to make them friendly and approachable; all of these are related to the concept of emotional labor. Emotional labor proposes that, to ensure customer satisfaction, it is vital for “managers or employers to regulate or manage employees' behavior or emotional expressions to ensure service quality” (Chu 2002). The concept of emotional labor was first developed by Arlie Hochschild, an organizational sociologist. Hochschild stated that if an employee were employed in a service field, then he or she would be required to “display specific sets of emotions (both verbal and nonverbal) with the goal of inducing particular feelings and responses among those for whom the service is provided” (Hochschild 1983). The concept of emotional labor has often been defined as the performance of an emotional action. Emotional acting can be divided into two different categories; superficial action and deep action. Surface acting is described as the act of expressing an emotion without actually feeling it (Hochschild 1983), which includes actions used to cover any negative emotions with positive actions. An example of this would be a bank teller who continually smiles at a customer even though the customer has been very rude. Deep acting is another form of emotional work that can be further divided into two different types of emotional actions; the first is to show the actual emotion that you... middle of the paper... the problem that exists in the theory of emotional labor is the emotional dissonance that exists for the employee and the impact this has on him and the their job satisfaction. Emotional dissonance is defined as “the feeling of discomfort that occurs when someone appraises an emotional experience as a threat to their identity” (Janz & Timmers 2002). The constant manipulation of emotions undertaken by employees is necessary because their jobs require them to always be polite and courteous to customers, regardless of how the consumer might treat the employee. This dissonance is said to cause negative effects on employees; i.e. disorders related to excessive stress. Mann, of the University of Salford, suggested that having to constantly manage one's emotions in this way could lead to work stress (Mann, 2004). Works cited