The influence of human resource practices on the negative consequences of customer aggression

Abstract

Mistreatment of employees by customers is a common problem in customer service workplaces. Yet, we know very little about whether the human resource practices organizations adopt can help to offset the negative impact of these encounters on employees. We remedy this oversight by considering whether the decisions firms make about how they manage their employees can help to reduce the negative effect of aggressiveness from customers on the decision by employees to leave the organization. We analyze field data from a 2010 survey of call centre managers (N=239) and find that call center establishments where employees encounter more aggressive customers feature jobs with less autonomy and job discretion. In addition, we examine whether specific HR practices can reduce or exacerbate the effect of aggressiveness from customers on voluntary turnover and find that establishments that use systematic selection in hiring, and that offer more generous benefits help reduce the negative impact of aggressiveness from customers on voluntary turnover. Moreover, when we assess the influence of bundles of HR practices (e.g., human capital enhancing practices, motivation enhancing practices, and empowerment enhancing practices), we show that adopting high performance work systems can reduce the negative impact of aggressive customers on voluntary turnover. practices into consideration, the effect disappears. Taken together, we show that the decisions about work organization and HR practices have an important role in influencing the negative consequences of aggressiveness from customers on employees such as voluntary turnover for the customer service workforce.