Mistreatment at the Interface: New Developments in Customer Mistreatment Research

Abstract

The customer-employee relationship straddles the boundaries between companies and their customers. Oftentimes, these relationships turn sour, as customers become perpetrators of abuse and mistreatment towards employees (such as customer service representatives and healthcare workers) who occupy the front-lines of their respective organizations. This symposium covers a range of research at the cutting-edge of our understanding of customer mistreatment--a breakdown at the customer-employee interface. These studies examine not only the far-reaching consequences of customer mistreatment, but also the ways by which this mistreatment emerges in the interstitial spaces shared by employees and organizational outsiders. These studies consist of both field and experimental data collected in an extensive range of research designs (e.g. daily diary, vignette experiment, critical incident, cross-sectional, and time-lagged). Moreover, these studies were undertaken in different countries (e.g., China, South Korea, Australia, and the Philippines)–adding the opportunity for discussion about cross-national differences in customer mistreatment of employees.