Emotional suppression and deviant behaviour in the call centre environment.

Abstract

The present research aimed to analyse whether the emotional regulation or suppression of call center employees in response to customer aggression or abuse contributes to deviant behaviours, given the demands for friendly service in the work environment. A call centre in Johannesburg, South Africa was used to conduct this research. This call centre provides leading client service to Retail Banking, Corporate Banking and Business Banking chosen markets. A qualitative study was conducted. Data was gathered by interviewing participants working at this call centre. A non - probability purposive sample of call centre employees was used. A sample of n = 17 was obtained for this research. Data was analysed using both content analysis and thematic content analysis. The present research underscores the importance of exploring the aspects of emotional suppression and deviant behaviour of call centre agents in the workplace. Furthermore, the present research provides strong evidence for deviant behaviours engaged in which are often only assumed as a matter of a priori reasoning or vague allusion. This research has found that due to emotional suppression, certain call centre employees in this sample do engage in deviant behaviours at work and make attributions outside of work.