Customer Incivility and Service Recovery Performance: Job Crafting as a Buffer

Abstract

This study explores the impact of customer incivility (CI) on service recovery performance (SRP) of Indian frontline banking employees with emotional exhaustion (EE) as a mediator. Whether job crafting behaviour of the employees would assuage the effect of uncivil customer interactions and, thereby, help in maintaining superior recovery performance is further investigated. Data from 428 dyads of employees were gathered to test the hypothesized relationships using structural equation modelling in AMOS 23. The results indicated that CI negatively influences SRP, and EE significantly mediates this relationship. Increasing social and structural resources significantly alleviate the negative effect of (a) CI on EE, (b) CI on SRP and (c) EE on SRP. On the other hand, increasing challenge job demands and decreasing hindrance job demands do not moderate the relationship between (a) CI and EE and (b) CI and SRP. However, decreasing hindrance job demands significantly moderate the negative effect of EE on SRP while, surprisingly, increasing challenge job demands strengthens the relationship between EE and SRP.