New Australian study says humour at work is key to successful customer engagements
Making customers and employees laugh or amusing them with light-hearted banter is a win-win proposition for managers
New research conducted at the UNSW Australia Business School suggests that the answer to the eternal question of how to keep customers engaged and satisfied is simple. Make them laugh, or at least try to.
This may go against some of the existing management theory, which suggests that the last place for humour is the workplace – and indeed it may seem brave to consider it – but every now and again, humour does have a place in the office or shop.
Our new study shows that making customers laugh or amusing them with light-hearted banter presents an all-round win-win.
Mind you, whether it’s perceived as being humorous very much depends on the person who’s receiving it.
We have explored the impact of humour in two different service environments: a suburban news agency in Sydney where one staffer had become something of a local legend for his clowning antics with customers, and at a tertiary education establishment in Germany, specifically when humour is used by lecturers.
Until we conducted this study, research on the effect of humour on frontline service encounters has been scant with previous research suggesting an unwelcome joke may equate to a major service failure, comparable to billing a customer the wrong amount.
