Just last week I discussed with my parents and friends over some possible career options, namely in the field of banking and finance. I was shown this video that described the nature of the jobs within the high-end financial services industry that fascinates me.
The service relationship Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) is promoting as part of the firm's service packages is relevant to the Grandey and Diamond's (2010) study on temporal relationship between the employee and client. What these top financial firms are placing a stronger emphasis now, than ever before, is the relationship with clients on top of industrial knowledge and expertise they provide. We can regard this change as commodification of service relationship or as BAML called it "return on relationship". It is a service that go beyond the simple listening and understanding of the clients' demands. It is a continual employee-to-client interactions that are carefully tailored to each client's needs and expectations for the long run, or a lifetime to some. This is the type of service qualities that stand out in the high-end financial service industry and justify the high fees they are able to incur. Gutek (1999) suggested that there is a link between greater familiarity in relationships to customer satisfaction, which as we all know, leads to profit (Pugh, 2001).
Whether such emotional labor demands place addition stress on employees is yet unknown, though Cote (2005) has suggested the long-term gains might be compensating enough to offset the energy costs. One thing we do know, there is a demand for such temporal relationship. Emotional labor is no longer simply the fabricating of emotions to deal with customers, it is about fostering relationships with strangers, who also happen to be your customers.
That is the new currency in global business: return on relationship.
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