Beyond interaction

Abstract

The literature on the role of customers in service work has neglected work that does not involve significant face-to-face interaction, assuming it to be distant from customer influence and thus highly routinisable. This article uses ethnographic data from housekeeping and room service in two urban luxury hotels in the USA to look comparatively at how customers influence this work and its management. It argues that customers affect several non-interactive dimensions of these jobs, including timing, pace and effort. These effects also influence managerial strategies for organising labour processes, making routinisation impossible and shaping alternatives. These findings indicate the need for a reconceptualisation of customer influence in work.