Workplace Learning in Interactive Service Work: Coming to Practice Differently in the Connected Service Encounter

Abstract

We increasingly live in a world where human and digital work and activities are intertwined in so-called digital networks, which implies changes to the skills demanded by human labour. Traditionally, the professional encounter between a service provider and a customer, client or learner has been conceptualised as ‘a game between people’, with little interference from technologies of any sort. This thesis explores how the digitalisation of frontline services changes workplace learning in interactive service work, with a specific focus on the emotional labour involved in service encounters. The theory of practice architecture is used as framework for exploring workplace learning in salespeople’s service encounters in connected retail chain stores. In the thesis, workplace learning refers to learning, training and skills development for worklife both in and outside of workplaces as well as in virtual spaces. The empirical foundation of the thesis comprises four separate studies conducted using ethnographic methods and online video research. Together, they contribute to the thesis by providing four perspectives on learning and training in service encounters: salespeople, apprentices, digital instructors (YouTube instructional videos) and employers, which is presented in four research papers. This thesis provides insights into the conditions that make salespeople’s service encounters in stores possible, how they are enacted as a game between people on the shopfloor, and why the fixed checkout has been and remains central to creating customer service and experiences. It also provides insights into how the retail chain organisations’ digitalisation of service encounters—aimed at creating seamless customer shopping experiences—is changing salespeople’s roles, skills and emotional labour. The thesis concludes that the existing conditions that form the practice architectures of salespeople’s service encounters are misaligned with those changes. Consequently, in order not to be marginalised in the connected store, retail FSEs must develop the skills necessary to interact and collaborate with technology and customers to create customer service and customer experiences. A significant contribution of this thesis that has implications for the design of VET and education for interactive service work is the findings that the connected service encounter is characterised by (1) a postdigital 6 dialogue; (2) service employees interact with both technology and customers; (3) service employees and technology have several roles, and (4) emotional labour skills comprise customer service skills intertwined with technical skills. In turn, the changes in service work identified in this thesis raise several questions regarding the development of workplace learning in the connected service encounter, such as, e.g., how to instruct and learn postdigital communication.