Customer Mistreatment Research Articles

It Went Downhill From There: The Spillover Effect from Previous Customer Mistreatment on Frontline Employees’ Service Delivery

Research indicates that a customer’s service experience is shaped by their past experiences with the firm. However, the extent to which past experiences with customers shape frontline service employees’ delivery of services has not been examined. We propose that the analysis of service encounters as discrete, independent units ignores possible linkages between customer experiences via frontline employees. Adopting a resource spill-over perspective across two studies, we find that employees’ experience of customer mistreatment compromised their subsequent service delivery. Using an experiment in Study 1, we find that these effects are mediated by changes in the employee’s self-control capacity. Using a field sample in Study 2, we find that these effects are moderated by the employee’s dispositional self-control capacity and their motivation to commit to display rules. Our findings show how service encounter outcomes can be shaped by distal service events and call for a more holistic understanding of the forces that shape service encounter outcomes. In particular, by highlighting the potential consequences, our findings challenge conventional work protocols that compel employees to persevere despite their experience of mistreatment. By detailing the mediating and moderating mechanisms of mistreatment spill-over in service organizations, we highlight the recovery mechanisms and practices that enable FLEs to remain resilient despite negative encounters with customers.

Customer mistreatment and employee customer-focused voice: the bright and dark sides of felt trust

PurposeThis study aims to assess a moderated-mediation model to account for the relationship between customer mistreatment and frontline hotel employees’ customer-focused voice, where their organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) served as a mediator and their felt trust (reliance and disclosure) by supervisors served as a moderator.Design/methodology/approachThe data were collected through paper-based questionnaires in a cross-sectional survey, consisting of 319 valid supervisor-employee-paired responses from 33 international tourist hotels in Taiwan. Regression analyses were used for hypothesis testing.FindingsOBSE mediates the negative effect of customer mistreatment on customer-focused voice. Employee felt reliance intensifies the negative impact of customer mistreatment on OBSE, and this interaction effect, in turn, reduces customer-focused voice through OBSE. The employee felt disclosure marginally significantly buffers the effect of customer mistreatment on OBSE.Practical implicationsGiven the adverse effect of customer mistreatment on customer-focused voice through OBSE, hotels should strengthen employees’ service mindset and value their suggestions. The double-edged effects of felt trust suggest that managers should form a trusting relationship with their subordinates and reassure them that isolated incidents of customer mistreatment will not jeopardize their reputation.Originality/valueThis study integrated sociometer and self-consistency theories to examine OBSE as a psychological mechanism to explain the mistreatment-voice process. Besides assessing felt trust’s two-dimensional effects, this research is possibly the first attempt to examine felt trust as an enabling force or a threat to OBSE in the context of customer mistreatment.

Be Resilient and Learn: When Service Employees Speak up About Customer Mistreatment

With much of the research highlighting the detrimental consequences of customer mistreatment, its functionality aspect is overlooked in the literature. Drawing from the failure and loss coping framework and resilience theory, we theorize that trait resilience functions to allow service employees to utilize customer mistreatment experiences as opportunities to learn, which further induces them to engage in voice behavior that benefits rather than harms the organization. Specifically, because resilience protects individuals from the immediate hindrances that interfere with learning, we argue that service employees with high trait resilience learn from customer mistreatment experiences, whereas those with low trait resilience do not. Further, we argue that service employees who learn from customer mistreatment experiences will speak up about the mistreatment to help others because learning provides the basis (e.g., knowledge and experience) for voice behavior. We test a theoretical model using experience-sampling data from a sample of hotel employees. The results show general support for the model. Our findings move beyond the perspective of viewing service employees as mere victims of customer mistreatment and acknowledge their active and pivotal roles in service improvement and organizational change.

The impact of customer mistreatment on employees: A moderated mediation model

This study aims to investigate employee reactions toward customer mistreatment. Mainly based on the self-concept perspective, we propose that when an employee's organization-based self-esteem is threatened by the negative experiences of customer mistreatment, he or she is more likely to engage in destructive and disengaged work behaviors. This relationship is especially stronger for individuals who have poorer relationships with their supervisors. We tested this theoretical model with a sample of 308 nurses nested within 64 work teams. The data were collected over three time points and the hypotheses were tested with multilevel regression analysis. Our findings suggest that organization-based self-esteem mediates the relationships between customer mistreatment and interpersonal deviance, job neglect, service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior, and job performance. Further, supporting our hypotheses, these relationships were stronger for employees with weaker leader-member exchange. Theoretical contribution, practical implications, and directions for future research are discussed.

Customer Injustice and Service Employees' Responses: A Social Exchange Perspective

Recent research has uncovered the debilitating effect that customers’ unfair treatment of service workers has for both employees and their employers. These studies have largely explained the effects of customer mistreatment through a conservation of resources (COR) theory lens, arguing that customer injustice depletes the regulatory resources of service employees, thereby impairing their well-being and ability to perform their job effectively. In our paper, we posit that the psychological process is more complex than this explication. That is, we argue that aspects of the employee-customer social exchange relationship must also be considered, and that such relational processes are critical above and beyond COR effects. After formulating our theoretical model, we offer time-lagged data from two studies of service workers supporting our hypotheses that customer injustice predicts employee turnover intentions (Study 1, N = 182) and citizenship behavior directed toward customers (Study 2, N = 337), and that these effects are mediated by perceived customer support and customer commitment, respectively, while controlling for COR effects. Incorporating insights from the customer service literature, we further demonstrate the role of display rule perceptions as a moderator of these sequential indirect effects.

How do mistreated high‐status service providers compensate?

AbstractThis study aims to examine the reactions of high‐status service employees to customer mistreatment. An inductive research design is adopted, relying on the qualitative data collected from semi‐structured interviews conducted with university professors, doctors, and high‐ranking bank employees in Lebanon. High‐status service providers who experience mistreatment by their customers experience strong feelings and may suffer from flashbacks triggered by similar circumstances. The data reveals two forms of compensating reaction: surface acting and the withholding of customer‐oriented organizational citizenship behaviors from the customer who mistreated them. The former creates an open loop spiral which affects downstream customers whereas the latter stops with the customer who mistreated them. The study contributes to the existing literature on customers' mistreatment, which has tended to focus on low‐status employees in traditional service contexts. In addition, as it was conducted in a society with a collectivistic culture it also provides valuable insights into the role played by culture. Finally, it contributes to management practice by helping managers recognize the impact of the mistreatment of high‐status service providers and to channel their subordinates' negative emotions into a more positive outcome.

Who will pay for customers' fault? Workplace cheating behavior, interpersonal conflict and traditionality

PurposeDespite workplace cheating behavior is common and costly, little research has explored its antecedents from customers' perspective. The current study aims to investigate the indirect mechanisms between customer mistreatment and cheating behavior, and exam the moderated role of traditionality.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on conservation of resources theory, the authors examine how customer mistreatment affects workplace cheating behavior. They test their hypotheses using a time-lagged field study of 183 employees.FindingsThe results show that customer mistreatment is positively related to interpersonal conflict with customers, which positively affects workplace cheating behavior. Traditionality moderates the indirect effect of customer mistreatment on workplace cheating behavior.Originality/valueThis study calls for researchers' attention to exploring the antecedents of workplace cheating behavior from customers' perspective, and first provides empirical evidence on the relationship between customer mistreatment and workplace cheating behavior, which has never been examined.

A COVID-19 contextual study of customers’ mistreatment and counterproductive work behavior at coffee cafés

PurposeThe issue of customer mistreatment in food and retail sectors has come under the spotlight during the COVID-19 crisis. The purpose of this paper is to examine the problem in the COVID-19 pandemic context and study its implications for employee counterproductive behavior in the workplace. Specifically, this study aims to investigate the relationship between customer mistreatment and employee counterproductive behavior by considering the mediating role of cognitive rumination and moderating role of servant leadership at coffee cafés that operated during the COVID-19 smart lockdown period.Design/methodology/approachStructured questionnaires were distributed to 479 frontline staff working at cafés and coffee shops located in two large cities of Pakistan. The questionnaire data were analyzed by using bootstrapped regression procedures to determine how the investigated variables influenced counterproductive work behavior during the pandemic.FindingsThe findings revealed a positive influence of customer mistreatment on counterproductive work behavior both directly as well as indirectly in the presence of employee rumination as a mediator. Furthermore, the presence of servant leadership at cafés and coffee shops was found to moderate the impact of customer mistreatment during the pandemic.Originality/valueThe study offers a novel insight into the relationships between mistreatment by customers, counterproductive work behavior, employee rumination and servant leadership in the COVID-19 pandemic context, hitherto unexplored.

A within-level analysis of the effect of customer-focused perspective-taking on deep acting and customer helping behaviors: The mediating roles of negative affect and empathy

Service employees can face customer mistreatment on a daily basis, which can negatively influence their affect and subsequent service performance. Despite this reality, little research has examined theoretically based interventions to change employees’ affective reactions to customer mistreatment. Using an experience sampling method, the current study examined customer-focused perspective-taking through a longitudinal design consisting of five days of baseline measurements, followed by five days of intervention measurements. Frontline service employees completed daily measures of affective reactions (i.e., negative affect and empathy) and employee performance (i.e., deep acting and customer helping behaviors). The results showed that customer-focused perspective-taking decreased negative affect and increased empathy toward customers, which led to more deep acting and customer helping behaviors. Regardless of fluctuations in daily difficult customer interactions, the positive effect of customer-focused perspective-taking on the outcomes remained consistent at the within-person level.

Too depleted to control yourself? Effect of customer mistreatment on after‐work maladaptive behaviours through self‐control capacity impairment

AbstractDrawing on self‐regulation theories, the current study examined the effect of the daily experience of customer mistreatment at work on three types of maladaptive behaviours after work (impulsive buying, overeating behaviours, and mobile phone overuse) through self‐control capacity impairment. Further, we investigated the moderating roles of two recovery activities at work (taking some time for relaxation and learning something new at work) on the relationship between customer mistreatment and employee self‐control capacity impairment. With daily diary data collected from 57 fulltime service employees across 5 working days, our results revealed that daily experience of customer mistreatment at work was positively related to employees' impulsive buying and mobile phone overuse after work (but not overeating behaviours) via self‐control capacity impairment after controlling for the mediating effect of negative affect. Besides, relaxation, but not learning, buffered the positive relationship between customer mistreatment and self‐control capacity impairment. These findings shed light on further understanding the underlying mechanisms between customer mistreatment and employee maladaptive behaviours after work and strategies at work that might mitigate the negative effects of customer mistreatment.

I do not want to smile! A response to customer mistreatment

Building upon social exchange theory and personality models, this study aimed to examine why and to what extent experiencing customer incivility leads employees to engage in emotional deviance. More precisely, we argued that negative emotions would act as a mediator in this relationship and that employees’ resilience would moderate this mediation. A total of 419 frontline employees participated in this study. Using the latent moderated structural equations method, this research showed that negative emotions mediated the relationship between customer incivility and emotional deviance. Moreover, as expected, employees’ resilience moderated the indirect effect of customer incivility on emotional deviance through negative emotions. More specifically, the indirect effect emerged as weaker for resilient as compared to non-resilient individuals. Overall, this study offers several practical implications for managers and organizations. Specifically, it proposes that managers and organizations should offer training programs to improve stress management and emotion regulation, such as relaxation, mindfulness techniques, and resilience-building programs.

Thwarted psychological needs: the negative impact of customer mistreatment on service employees and the moderating role of empowerment HRM practices

PurposeDrawing on self-determination theory (SDT), this study aims to understand the adverse effects of customer mistreatment on employee performance and well-being by thwarting the satisfaction of employees' basic psychological needs. It also examines how these negative effects may be mitigated by empowerment human resource management (HRM) practices.Design/methodology/approachTwo studies were conducted using survey data collected in China. In Study 1, cross-sectional data from 321 telemarketing employees were analyzed to examine how customer mistreatment reduces the satisfaction of employees' basic psychological needs, harming job performance and job satisfaction. In Study 2, multiwave, multisource data were collected from 149 property agents and their supervisors to replicate the findings of Study 1 and further test empowerment HRM as a moderator of the relationship between customer mistreatment and satisfaction of needs.FindingsThe results from both studies show that customer mistreatment leads to low job performance and job satisfaction via reduced satisfaction of employees' needs for autonomy and competence but not relatedness. Moreover, the negative effect on the satisfaction of employees' needs for autonomy and competence was buffered when organizations had high empowerment HRM practices in place.Originality/valueThis study provides new insights on customer mistreatment by understanding its effects from a motivational perspective, which has not been considered in prior research. It also explores how HRM practices can help satisfy employee needs in adverse work environments induced by customer mistreatment.

Linking leader humility with service performance: the role of service climate and customer mistreatment

This study investigates the influence of leader humility on employee service performance. New conceptual observations are presented through the integration of leadership and service climate literature. Grounded in social information processing theory, this study explores how leader humility and customer mistreatment support the improvement of service climate and employee service performance. Data are collected from multiple sources of 294 hotel employees at three points of time in China. Results reveal that leader humility positively influences employee service performance through service climate. Besides, leader humility shows a strong relationship with the service climate for employees when frontline service employees observe customer mistreatment.

Walk A Mile in Their Shoes: Perspective-Taking as an Intervention for Difficult Customer Interactions

An important gap in the customer mistreatment literature is understanding how employees’ affective reactions can be modified to decrease negative affective reactions. The current study draws from affective events theory to examine how customer-focused perspective-taking, or employees taking the customer’s point of view, can modify employees’ affective reactions to customer mistreatment. Withholding customer compensation was examined as an outcome of customer-focused perspective-taking, and anger and empathy were examined as mediators. A two-group (customer-focused perspective-taking: yes or no) experimental design examined the between-subjects effect of customer-focused perspective-taking among 128 frontline managers. The results indicate mediation of anger and empathy between perspective-taking and customer compensation, supporting customer-focused perspective-taking as an intervention to help employees maximize service delivery. The most important theoretical contribution of the article is showing that by interrupting the affective events theory process at a within-person level, affective reactions and episodic performance can be modified when reacting to customer mistreatment.

Workplace knowledge hiding among front line employees: moderation of felt obligation

PurposeFront line employees (FLEs) duel challenges of handling exceedingly customer demands and stressful supervision. Service organizations highly dependent on knowledge sharing among organizational employees. This study incorporates the unique internal and external negative forces of abusive supervision and customer mistreatment, forming a negative emotion towards the organization and customers and reduces the knowledge sharing appetite. This study aims to demonstrate the effect of the abusive supervision and customer mistreatment on the revenge attitude and felt obligation to moderate the knowledge hiding.Design/methodology/approachSurvey data collected from the 201 lower rank police officers, who were directly interacting with their respective supervisors and public members (customers). Cross-sectional collected data analysed using structural equation modelling partial least square regression in SmartPLS 3.1.FindingsFLEs perceived abusive supervision and customer mistreatment significantly influence the revenge attitude. The revenge attitude significantly explicates the lack of sharing, playing dumb and rationalized knowledge hiding among FLEs. However, the effect of revenge attitude on the evasive knowledge hiding was insignificant. Moreover, the effect of felt obligation significantly explains the evasive and playing dumb knowledge hiding among the FLEs. Felt obligation significantly moderates the revenge attitude and playing dumb knowledge hiding.Research limitations/implicationsLimitations of study included the direct and indirect role of other factors that can bring more understanding of the knowledge hiding behaviors in the future research. These factors could be culture, service delivery nature and work system at the macro-level,and personality type, ability to focus and locus of control at a personal level, inducing the knowledge hiding behaviors.Practical implicationsThe study results highlight the consequences of abusive supervision and mistreatment from the customer as a revenge attitude among the FLEs. Moreover, the revenge attitude may not leads to knowledge hiding with harmful purposes. However, felt obligation at a personal level can reduce the knowledge hiding attitudes at the workplace. A trust climate can promote knowledge sharing.Originality/valueThe study is the first of its kind to explore the FLEs negative emotion of revenge triggered by the abusive supervision and mistreatment from customer leads to different aspects of knowledge hidings. Knowledge hiding is not always associated with the negative motivation and curtailed with the promotion of felt obligation at employee levels. The study also extends the knowledge hiding behaviours antecedents within the work settings. Moreover, the management of knowledge hiding behaviours curtailed with the enhancement of employees felt an obligation. Service industries need to realize the importance of managing customer expectation and supervisor role for better service performance with the promotion of knowledge sharing within the organization.

Engaging in emotional labour when facing customer mistreatment in hospitality

Emotional labour (EL) is a self-controlling process during which employees monitor and regulate their moods and expressions when interacting with customers. Such self-monitoring takes place through employees engaging with either deep acting (DA) or surface acting (SA) EL strategies. Although empirical evidence indicates that employees are capable of deploying both strategies, it acknowledges a predominant use of SA when employees deal with aggressive customers, something which in turn creates resource-depleting effects. Nevertheless, there is lack of a holistic understanding of the conditions under which employees engage in either strategy. Also, research is inconclusive on the negative effects of SA; how these can be overcome; whether the means for overcoming these effects associate with the deployment of DA; and what the effects of DA are in conditions of customer mistreatment. Motivated by the above knowledge gap, we drew on contagious emotions, affective events and emotional labour and emotional intelligence theories to conduct 70 in-depth, semi-structured interviews within the hotel industry. While findings confirm extant research on the conditions that lead to the deployment of SA and its effects to employee welfare and performance, they contribute that the means used to overcome the negative effects of SA, stimulate the development of conditions that lead the way to the deployment of DA. The study also contributes positive organisational and employee effects from applying DA in aggressive customer contexts, which reinforce the very conditions that enable it.

The Impact of Customer Mistreatment on Employee Displaced Aggression: The Moderating Effect of Interpersonal Sensitivity and Moral Identity.

Although customer mistreatment produces harmful consequences for employees and organizations, our understanding of the boundary conditions of customer mistreatment has largely been neglected. This study examines whether and when customer mistreatment influences employee displaced aggression toward coworkers by demonstrating interpersonal sensitivity and moral identity traits as two critical boundary conditions. Through the analysis of 623 employees’ questionnaire data, the results showed that customer mistreatment was positively related to employee displaced aggression toward coworkers. Furthermore, interpersonal sensitivity exacerbates the effect of customer mistreatment on displaced aggressive behaviors, while moral identity buffering the effect.

Customer reactions to bank hypocrisy: the moderating role of customer–company identification and brand equity

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of perceived corporate hypocrisy on customer mistreatment behaviors within the banking industry and the moderating effects of customer–company identification (CCI) and brand equity on the hypocrisy-mistreatment behavior relationship.Design/methodology/approachUsing multistage sampling, 567 South Korean banking service users participated in an online survey. Structural equation modeling (confirmatory factor analysis) and hierarchical regression analysis were used to analyze the data.FindingsPerceived corporate hypocrisy was positively related to customer mistreatment behaviors. CCI and brand equity differentially moderated the positive relationship between perceived corporate hypocrisy and customer mistreatment behaviors. Specifically, CCI and brand equity strengthened and weakened the positive relationship between perceived corporate hypocrisy and customer mistreatment behaviors, respectively.Practical implicationsMarketers and banking service managers should pay careful attention to customer evaluations of their social activities and communication about the ethical values and actions of their firms. Since CCI and brand equity have contrasting moderating effects on the corporate hypocrisy-aggressive behavior relationship, marketers should devise different strategies to manage the adverse effects of such corporate crises on company-identified and brand-committed customers. For example, managers should focus on customers who actively express their deep sense of disappointment or profound anger in response to corporate hypocrisy (e.g. those with high levels of CCI) because they are likely to exhibit aggressive behaviors toward the company or its employees. Managers need to devise customized relationship-recovery strategies for such customers (e.g. forging a personal connection between the customer and service provider).Originality/valueThe present findings delineate the adverse effects of perceived corporate hypocrisy on customer behaviors and the moderating effect of customer relationship quality on the corporate hypocrisy-mistreatment behavior relationship within the banking industry.

Customer mistreatment and employee well-being: A daily diary study of recovery mechanisms for frontline restaurant employees in a hotel

Abstract Research on customer mistreatment towards frontline service employees in the hospitality industry has been steadily rising in recent years, but little is known about the mechanism underlying its detrimental impact on the non-work life of employees and why some of them could handle it effectively. By integrating conservation of resources theory with the stressor-detachment model, this daily diary study examined the effect of daily customer mistreatment on employees’ daily well-being at home (vigor and exhaustion) through daily psychological detachment. Employees’ recovery self-efficacy and the trait of resilience, which might mitigate the process were also examined. An experience sampling methodology was applied, and the survey data were gathered from 54 frontline restaurant employees conducted across 5 consecutive workdays. Results of hierarchical linear modeling supported all the hypotheses in this study. Our findings revealed a spillover effect of customer mistreatment and the importance of improving employees’ recovery in the hospitality context.

Examining temporal precedence between customer mistreatment and customer-directed counterproductive work behavior.

Examining temporal precedence between customer mistreatment and customer-directed counterproductive work behavior.