Work and psychological suffering: A case study on customer service employees at an electrical services company

This chapter communicates some results of an ongoing research project. The study presented here was conducted in an energy company of the city of Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina, with the employees in the customer service area. It is considered of great importance to analyze the effects that working in customer service has on this sector's employees, who must meet the demands of users and, not infrequently, must deal with customers' annoyance with regard to the service or the costs. This work continues research that had allowed us to make an instrument which aims to determine psycho-social-labor vulnerability and its impact on mental health. The aim of this research is to assess psychosocial-labor vulnerability and its effects on mental health in customer service employees of the electricity services sector in Rosario, Santa Fe. To retrieve the data and evaluate it, we used our own standardized instrument. It was applied to a statistically significant sample of a target population group of 98 workers who do customer services in six branch offices. Finally, a focus group with some selected workers was created; the sample was chosen by purpose and availability. The results showed us levels of psychological distress and suffering. We provide details of the findings in the information analysis.