Robot service failure: the double-edged sword effect of emotional labor in service recovery

Purpose This paper aims to discuss the effect of frontline employees' emotional labor (surface acting vs. deep acting) on customer satisfaction and the moderating role of responsibility attributions in the situation of robot service failure. Design/methodology/approach The scenario-based experimental method was designed to perform hypothesis testing and SPSS was used to analyze the data from the 363 questionnaires collected. Findings The results indicate that (1) employees' emotional labor recovery has a double-edged sword effect. Deep acting improves customer satisfaction, while surface acting undermines the effectiveness of service recovery and leaves customer satisfaction below previous levels. (2) Customers' responsibility attributions for service failure moderate the effect of service recovery. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to focus on the role of frontline employees' emotional labor in robot service failure contexts, which not only enriches and expands the relevant literature in this domain, but also deepens the understanding of how emotional labor and responsibility attribution effect the customer satisfaction.