A Review, Synthesis, and Research Agenda for the Customer Service Experience Authors: Groth, M., Wu, Y., Nguyen, H., & Johnson, A
A Review, Synthesis, and Research Agenda for the Customer
Service Experience, and An Investigation of Customer
Mistreatment Dimensions
Yu Wu
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of
Master of Philosophy
UNSW Business School
School of Management February 2019
1 THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES THESIS/DISSERTATION SHEET Surname/Family Name: Wu Given Name/s Yu Abbreviation fordegree as given in the University M.Phil. calendar Faculty UNSW Business School School School of Management Thesis Title
Abstract 350 words maximum: In this thesis, two studies are presented focusing on customer service between service employees and customers. In Study I, 18 years of customer service literature published in key service research outlets since 2000 was reviewed. Specifically,a review and synthesis of key theoretical perspectives and empirical findingswere completed for three research areas: (a) affect in customer service, including emotional labor and emotional contagion processes; (b) customer mistreatment; (c) customer service behaviors, including customer orientation and service-oriented citizenship behaviors. The culmination was a critical assessment of the 18 years literature and concluded a discussion of future research agendas and practical implications forservice managers. Study 2 was an experimental study focusing on the effect of different facets of customer mistreatment on service employee's well-being and work behavior. Previous research studies have examined customer mistreatment as a fairly broad and global construct, which does not capture the multidimensionality of customer mistreatment. To extend our understanding about the effects of customer mistreatment, Study 2 examined the effect of two customer mistreatment facets, intensity of customer mistreatment and target of customer mistreatment, on service employees' feeling of emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge. Video-based methods were used to manipulate intensity and target of customer mistreatment. 220 undergraduates from an Australian university participated the study in exchange for course credits. Data analysis results showed that the relationship between different facetsof customer mistreatment and service employee's feelings of emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge is mediated by service employee's negative emotions. Besides, when the intensity of customer mistreatment is high, the mediated relationship between customer mistreatment and its consequences on service employee's feelings of emotional exhaustions and desire forrevenge is more salient. When the customer mistreatment is employee-targeted, the mediated relationship between customer mistreatment and its consequences on service employee's feelings of emotional exhaustions and customer mistreatment is more salient. Finally, theoretical contributions and practical implications were discussed. This thesis adopted positivist approach with journal article-based thesis fonnat.
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Details of publication #1: Full title: The Moment of Truth: A Review, Synthesis, and Research Agenda for the Customer Service Experience Authors: Groth, M., Wu, Y., Nguyen, H., & Johnson, A. Journal or book name: Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior Volume/page numbers: 6/89-113 Date accepted/published: �ff/of/ ).Of f. Status Published V Accepted and In In progress A press (submitted) The Candidate's Contribution to the Work 1. The candidate wrote several major sections of this publication (Affect in customer service, including emotional labor and emotional contagion). 2. The candidate completed a comprehensive literature research and coding. 3. The candidate contributed to editing of the overall manuscript. Location of the work in the thesis and/or how the work is incorporated in the thesis: This publication provides anintegrative review andsynthesis of the literature with a focus on important andinterrelated aspects of customer service, including theoretical perspectives and empirical findings. Primary Supervisor's Declaration I declare that: • the informationabove is accurate • this has been discussed with the PGC and it is agreed that this publication canbe included in this thesis in lieu of a Chapter • All of the co-authors of the publication have reviewed the above information and have a�eed to its veracity by signing a 'Co-Author Authorisation form. Date (ddlmm/�) 2.1-2:_-1.d}I
7 ORIGINALITY STATEMENT
‘I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project's design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged.’
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‘I hereby grant the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all proprietary rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation. I also authorise University Microfilms to use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissertation Abstract International (this is applicable to doctoral theses only). I have either used no substantial portions of copyright material in my thesis or I have obtained permission to use copyright material; where permission has not been granted I have applied/will apply for a partial restriction of the digital copy of my thesis or dissertation.'
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Date ……………………………………………...... Acknowledgements
Firstly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor Prof. Markus
Groth for the continuous support of my MPhil study and related research, for his patience, motivation, and immense knowledge. His guidance helped me in all the time of research and writing of this thesis. I could not have imagined having a better advisor and mentor for my MPhil study.
Besides my advisor, I would like to thank my family for supporting me spiritually throughout writing this thesis and my life in general.
8 Table of Contents
Abstract ...... 2 Originality Statement ...... 3 Copyright Statement ...... 4 Authenticity Statement ...... 5 Acknowledgements ...... 8 List of Figures ...... 11 List of Tables ...... 11 Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 12 1.1 Research Background and Motivation ...... 12 1.2 Philosophical Foundations of Research ...... 16 1.3 Organization of the thesis ...... 16 Chapter 2: The Moment of Truth: A Review, Synthesis, and Research Agenda for the Customer Service Experience ...... 19 2.1 Introduction ...... 19 2.2 Service Research: Current State of Play in An Evolving Field ...... 23 2.3 Affect in Customer Service Delivery ...... 26 2.3.1 Theoretical Perspectives on Emotional Labor ...... 27 2.3.2 Emotional Labor: Empirical Findings ...... 31 2.3.3 Emotional Contagion ...... 33 2.4 Customer Mistreatment ...... 35 2.4.1 Theoretical Perspectives on Customer Mistreatment ...... 37 2.4.2 Customer Mistreatment: Empirical Findings ...... 40 2.5 Customer Service Behaviors ...... 44 2.5.1 Theoretical Perspectives on Customer Service Behaviors ...... 46 2.5.2 Customer Orientation ...... 47 2.5.3 Service-Orientated Citizenship Behaviors ...... 49 2.6 Future Research Directions ...... 51 2.6.1 Dynamic Aspects of Customer Service ...... 52 2.6.2 Multilevel Theories and Measurement of Customer Service ...... 53 2.6.3 Understanding the Role of Context in Customer Service ...... 54 2.7 Practical Implications ...... 55 Chapter 3: An Experiment Investigating different facets of customer mistreatment . 57 3.1 Introduction ...... 57 3.2 Theoretical background and hypothesis development ...... 65 3.2.1 Intensity of customer mistreatment and its impacts on service employees’ outcomes ...... 66 3.2.2 Target of customer mistreatment and its impact on service employees’ outcomes ...... 70 3.2.3 The mediating mechanism of service employees’ negative emotions ...... 73 3.3 Method ...... 75 3.3.1 Participants ...... 75
9 3.3.2 Experimental manipulations and procedures ...... 76 3.3.3 General Research design ...... 76 3.3.4 Script Development ...... 77 3.3.5 Video development ...... 77 3.3.6 Measures ...... 79 3.4 Results ...... 82 3.4.1 Manipulation Check ...... 82 3.4.2 Reliability and Validity Assessment ...... 83 3.4.3 Structural Equation Modeling and Mediation Analysis ...... 84 3.5 Discussion ...... 89 3.5.1 Theoretical implication ...... 89 3.5.2 Practical implication ...... 91 3.5.3 Limitations and suggestions to future research ...... 92 Chapter 4: Conclusion ...... 95 4.1 Summary ...... 95 4.2 Contributions ...... 99 4.3 Practical implication ...... 100 4.4 Limitations and directions for future research ...... 102 Reference ...... 104 Appendix A. Video scripts for different experimental conditions ...... 124 Appendix B. Study 2 Survey ...... 140 Appendix C. A list of assumptions of structural models (Kline, 2012, p. 113) ...... 143
10 List of Figures
Figure 1. Topic areas covered in customer service-related review papers that published in top service research outlets since 2000…………………………………………….22
Figure 2. Theoretical model……………………..………………………………..…..65
Figure 3. Estimated structural model………………………………..………….…….86
List of Tables
Table 1. Summary of key concepts reviewed and major empirical conclusions from each stream of research……………………………………………………………….……25
Table 2. Limitation of literature and future research suggestions……………….……52
Table 3. Sample Scripts of Passenger and Airport Service Employee Interaction…....79
Table 4. List of survey items and results of confirmatory factor analysis………….…81
Table 5. Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlationsa…………………………...…83
Table 6. Results of bootstrapping analysis: Direct effects and Indirect Effects for
Mediation Models…...……………………………………………………...………….87
Table 7. Summary of Hypotheses and Outcomes…………………………….………..88
11 Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Research Background and Motivation
In recent decades, the service industry has become the leading force for global economic growth. According to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (2017), the service industry accounted for more than 63% of the world’s GDP and more than 80% of US GDP. As the global economy is significantly dominated by service industry, providing high-quality service to their customers is prioritized by most service organizations. The importance of customer service has sparked great interest of scholars from multiple research fields, such as marketing, organizational behavior and organizational psychology, management, human resource management, and sociology.
The emergence of service industry first inspired many researchers to differentiate goods and services (Shostack, 1977). Early service literature argued that service has five core characteristics which differentiated service from products.
Compared with products, service is more intangible, heterogeneous, and perishable; the production and consumption of service is simultaneous; service often involves coproduction, which requires customers’ active participation to produce the service with service providers (Bowen, 1986; Bowen & Schneider, 1988; Shostack, 1977). Besides, in the academic literature, the definition of service has shifted from an output orientation (i.e. characteristics of service such as intangibility or perishability) to processes orientation (Edvardsson, et al., 2011). Researchers adopted processes orientation defined service as “the application of specialized competence (knowledge and skills) through deeds, processes, and performances for the benefits of another entity or the entity itself” (Vargo & Lusch, 2004, p. 2). According to service-dominant logic
(S-D logic), service covers almost all conceivable forms of intangible value addition
12 through different forms of service delivery, such as traditional service delivery (e.g., retail, hospitality), self-service, or non-profit contexts (Pugh & Subramony, 2016).
The scope of customer service research covers three important players in service context, namely, customers, service employees and service organizations. In the academic literature, many research studies focused on the effect of service delivery on customer satisfaction (Anderson, 2006; Bowen & Schneider, 2014), customer loyalty
(Bowen & Schneider, 2014; Jain et al., 2017) and customer engagement and delight
(Brodie et al., 2011; Groth & Goodwin, 2010). Recently, researchers started to involve service employee’s perspectives in customer service research, such as employee satisfaction, engagement and well-being (Bowen & Schneider, 2014; Grandey &
Melloy, 2017; Wirtz & Jerger, 2016), employee emotions (Groth & Goodwin, 2010;
Ryan & Ployhart, 2003), as well as employee characteristics and competence (Gabriel et al., 2016; Ranjan et al., 2015; Subramony & Pugh, 2015). Besides, organizational practices related to service delivery, and the effect of service delivery on organizational outcomes both received many attentions from social scholars, such as human resource management practices of service organizations (Ostrom et al., 2015; Subramony, 2017;
Vogus & McClelland, 2016), and firm profitability (Bates et al., 2003; Reinartz, et al.,
2005). This thesis will specifically focus on three specific subtopics which are of particular relevance in the organizational behavior field and have informed the two studies here.
The first subtopic that I focused on is about service employees’ affective activities during service delivery. One research topic that has attracted substantial scholarly work is emotional labor. After Hochschild (1983) first introduced emotional labor, which researchers used to recognize its importance for service employees as well as customers engaged in service delivery. The existing emotional labor research covers
13 a wide range of topics. Grandey and Melloy (2017) developed a three-level framework including various constructs that previous studies have tested in service context, such as individual-level antecedents and outcomes of emotional labor, mediators, as well as personal-level and organizational-level moderators.
The second subtopic of customer service focuses on the unpleasant interactions between customers and service employees. One popular research topic in this research area is customer mistreatment. As service organizations’ frontline workers in service delivery, service employees often need to deal with customer’s unreasonable request, disrespectfulness, and rudeness. The high frequency of customer mistreatment has motivated many researchers to investigate the causes and mechanisms behind unpleasant interactions between customers and service employees. A relatively recent article by Koopmann et al. (2015) introduced a multilevel model of customer mistreatment that includes a wide range of constructs, such as service encounter level antecedents and outcomes of customer mistreatment and mediators, as well as individual level antecedents and outcome of customer mistreatment and mediators.
Besides, they argue that individual level constructs can moderate the relationships in service encounter level (Koopmann et al., 2015).
The third subtopic area focuses on the activities and behaviors that service employees’ direct toward affecting service quality (Rogelberg et al. 1999; Ryan &
Ployhart, 2003). Some topics of this research area are customer orientation and service- oriented citizenship behaviors. Previous research on customer orientation has focused on customer orientation as a predictor of customer outcomes, such as perceived service quality and customer satisfaction (Bettencourt & Brown, 1997; Stock & Hoyer, 2005).
Other studies have shown that customer orientation also has a direct impact on performance-related outcomes, such as employee performance (Brown et al., 2002;
14 Stock & Hoyer, 2005) and organizational-level performance (Frambach et al., 2016).
Service-oriented citizenship behavior is rooted in the management literature on organizational citizenship behavior (Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1997). Service scholars have examined citizenship behavior in the service context, and they have conceptualized service-oriented behaviors as customer-oriented citizenship (Hui et al.,
2001). Similar to organizational citizenship behavior, service-oriented behaviors are outside of service employees’ formal role requirements, which greatly contribute to better overall organizational effectiveness, as well as a better service delivery experience for both service employees and customers.
After decades of development in customer service research, it is time to review the literature, and conduct new research studies in the area that have not been investigated in customer service research. The research was two-fold: First, an integrative review and synthesis of the customer service literature over the past 18 years was conducted. Then an exploration of the impact of customer mistreatment on service employee’s emotional well-being and service behavior which took an in-depth look at customer mistreatment by studying the effects of two different facets of customer mistreatment on service employee’s psychological well-being and service behaviors.
Previous studies examined customer mistreatment as a fairly broad and global construct, which did not capture the multidimensionality of customer mistreatment. In service encounters, the target of any customer mistreatment and the intensity of customer mistreatment are likely to influence the impact that customer mistreatment has on both employees and customers. An in-depth examination of target and intensity of customer mistreatment can therefore extend our understanding about customer mistreatment and its effect on service employees.
15
1.2 Philosophical Foundations of Research
There are different philosophical foundations of social science, such as positivism, postpositivism, interpretive social science, critical social science, and feminism. These philosophical foundations are different in terms of ontological assumptions, epistemology, paradigm, and methodology. This thesis is based on a positivism approach. Some features of positivism are distinct from other philosophical foundations. The purpose of research is to “discover natural laws so people can predict and control events.”; the theory looks like “a logical, deductive system of interconnected definitions, axioms, and laws.”; the evidence is “based on precise observations that others can repeat.”; the relevance of knowledge is “an instrumental orientation used, and knowledge enables people to master and control events” (Neuman,
2013, p. 121). Experimental research is appropriate for research studies based on positivism. Newman (2013, p. 47) mentioned that experimental research “manipulates conditions for some research participants but not others and then compares group responses to see whether doing so made a difference.”
1.3 Organization of the thesis
The current thesis follows a journal article-based approach, Study 1 has been published in the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational
Behavior, Study 2 is formatted as a stand-alone journal article. The remainder of the thesis is structured as follows. First, in Chapter 2, I conducted a systematic review study of the customer service literature ranging from 2000 to 2018. This study identified three important and interrelated aspects of customer service that specifically focus on the interpersonal service interaction between employees and customers: (a) affect in
16 customer service, including emotional labor and emotional contagion processes; (b) customer mistreatment, the low-quality interpersonal treatment of customers toward service employees; and (c) customer service behaviors, including customer orientation and service-oriented citizenship behaviors. Additionally, the theoretical foundations and empirical findings across these interrelated areas of customer service research were examined and a critical assessment of the literature and discussion of future research agendas and practical implications for service managers completes this portion
Chapter 3 describes an experimental study that focused on the effects of two different facets of customer mistreatment on service employee’s emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge. The study primarily focuses on customer mistreatment, yet it encompasses all three topics of customer service that were identified in Study 1, namely affective service delivery, customer mistreatment, and customer service behaviors.
Specifically, in Study 2 the focus was on whether the intensity of customer mistreatment and the target of customer mistreatment cause different level of service employees’ feelings of emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge. To do so, an experimental study was implemented with 220 undergraduates from a large Australian university.
Structural equation modelling was used to test study hypotheses. Results show that service employees’ experience of emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge vary depending on different levels of intensity and different target of customer mistreatment.
The experimental study also reveals that service employees’ negative emotions play a mediating role in the relationship between customer mistreatment and service employees’ feelings of emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge.
Chapter 4 presents the conclusions of this thesis beginning with a summarization of the contribution of the systematic review study and experimental study.
Subsequently, a discussion of what can be learned, or taken away from this thesis along
17 with some proposed interesting research questions or directions that should be addressed by future researchers.
18 Chapter 2: The Moment of Truth: A Review, Synthesis, and Research Agenda for the Customer Service Experience1
This chapter provides an integrative review and synthesis of the literature with a focus on three important and interrelated aspects of customer service that specifically focus on the interpersonal service interaction between employees and customers: (a) affect in customer service, including emotional labor and emotional contagion processes; (b) customer mistreatment, the low-quality interpersonal treatment of customers toward service employees; and (c) customer service behaviors, including customer orientation and service-oriented citizenship behaviors. This chapter reviews theoretical perspectives for each of these streams of research and summarize the current knowledge regarding empirical findings. This chapter provides a critical assessment of the literature and conclude with a discussion of future research agendas and practical implications for service managers.
2.1 Introduction
The service industry increasingly dominates the global economy. In 2017, it accounted for more than 63% of the world’s GDP and more than 80% of US GDP
(Central Intelligence Agency, 2017). As a result, in most industrialized countries, approximately three quarters of the labor force currently works in the service industry.
At the heart of the service industry are customers, as well as the service of customers.
Even a growing number of employees in some traditionally “nonservice jobs” spend
1This chapter is published as Groth, M., Wu, Y., Nguyen, H., & Johnson, A. (2019). The Moment of Truth: A Review, Synthesis, and Research Agenda for the Customer Service Experience. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 6, 89-113. 19 increasing amounts of time interacting with customers on a regular basis (Liao &
Subramony, 2008).
Because of the emergence of the service-dominated economy, the provision of excellent customer service has become a competitive advantage and a core competency toward which most service organizations strive. This imperative to provide high-quality service has sparked the interest to investigate the dynamic relationship between customers, service employees, and service organizations (Subramony & Pugh, 2015;
Gabriel et al., 2016; Subramony, 2017). The quality of interactions between service employees and customers is obviously a critical facet of the service experience; however, much of the service delivery is intangible and based on subjective perceptions of both employees and customers. Thus, the interpersonal interaction—the “moment of truth” when a customer interacts with the service provider and builds service relationships with the organization (Bitner, 1995)—has been identified as a critical touch point that needs to be better understood and carefully managed. Doing so will not only help to more effectively attract, serve, and retain customers, but also to better prepare frontline service employees for their role.
Service research has originated in the marketing literature, and a consumer- driven view still dominates much of service scholarship. Nevertheless, service research has increasingly evolved as an interdisciplinary field outside of marketing, such as management, organizational behavior, organizational psychology, operations management, and human resource management. New service innovations and technological advances, which allow for increased personalization and customer integration in service delivery, have blurred the lines between traditional roles of service employees and customers, resulting in vibrant yet fragmented streams of research related to service delivery. However, scholars have bemoaned the comparatively limited
20 influence of management scholars in the services domain (Bowen, 2016) and have pointed out that theoretical contributions of management researchers within service research are still fairly limited (Pugh & Subramony, 2016).
Regardless of discipline, a customer-centric view of services still dominates much of the empirical literature and continues to shape our understanding of the service experience. Previous literature reviews of service scholarship suggest that topics such as customer satisfaction, service quality, customer loyalty and retention, customer engagement, and customer relationship management dominate the vast majority of service scholarship (see also Benoit et al., 2017; Jain et al., 2017). Although some reviews of service research have appeared in the management literature, they have often adopted a human resource perspective on examining human resource–specific aspects of service delivery (e.g., Subramony & Pugh, 2015; Vogus & McClelland, 2016; for exceptions, see Ryan & Ployhart, 2003; Groth & Goodwin, 2010).
Figure 1 shows a visual depiction of the “moment of truth” when employees and customers meet. The service interaction—the actual service delivery—shown in the middle of the figure is at the core of the service experience; however, it is influenced by the skills, expectations, and individual characteristics that both employees and customers contribute before and after the interpersonal interaction (e.g., mood of employee, customer loyalty after the service delivery). However, the service interaction itself does not occur within a vacuum, but rather within an organizational ecosystem that impacts the delivery itself (e.g., physical service environment), as well as factors that indirectly impact both employees and customers beyond the actual interpersonal interaction (e.g., service climate and leadership within the organization, communication to customers regarding service expectations).
21 Prior to the writing of this article, we conducted a “review of review papers” and identified the topics in service research–related review papers that have been published in key service research outlets since the year 2000. Figure 1 shows a visual representation of these select topics. As can be seen, the majority of work has focused on findings regarding customer outcomes, human resource management practices, as well as more general conceptualizations of service models. However, far fewer reviews have focused specifically on what happens during the “moment of truth,” that is, the interpersonal service interaction between employees and customers.
Our purpose is to provide a review of three topics within the service research domain that specifically focus on the “moment of truth” between service employees and customers: affect in customer service delivery, customer mistreatment, and employee customer service behaviors. These topics originate from the perspective of management and organizational psychology, but have received varying degrees of attention within the larger service literature.
22 For the reasons discussed above, our review purposely focuses on a few select topics. Although we acknowledge the multidisciplinary nature and diversity of present- day service research, it is beyond the scope of our review to adequately discuss the entire field. As discussed, reviews of topics such as customer outcomes, human resource management practices, and service climate are provided elsewhere. We approach our review primarily from the perspective of management and organizational psychology and provide a review of selective theoretical contributions and empirical studies that have significantly shaped the quickly evolving service research literature within these subfields.
We organize our review into five sections. In the first, we start with a brief overview of the nature of services and commentary on the current state of the service research field. In the next three sections, we review the three topics within the service research literature that are at the core of this review—respectively, affect in customer service, customer mistreatment, and employee customer service behavior. We focus on both theoretical perspectives as well as empirical findings for each topic. Finally, we provide a research agenda for future research topics and methods and offer practical recommendations for service managers. Table 1 shows a summary of the topics discussed as well as key empirical conclusions from each stream of research.
2.2 Service Research: Current State of Play in An Evolving Field
As mentioned earlier, much of the pioneering work on service research originated in the marketing literature, where a consumer-driven approach was trying to come to terms with the nature of a rapidly changing economy starting in the 1980s.
Early theoretical work tried to delineate services from goods by defining characteristics of services and by establishing a classification of services (Zeithaml et al., 1985). This
23 literature established five commonly agreed core characteristics of services as key distinguishing factors of services compared to goods: intangibility, heterogeneity, perishability, simultaneity of production and consumption, and customer participation in service delivery.
These early frameworks on service characteristics have been largely superseded by research on a service-dominant (S-D) logic, a meta-theoretical framework that suggests that all exchanges can be viewed as service-for-service exchanges.
Perspectives on S-D logic have increasingly established themselves as a widely accepted paradigm among service researchers (Vargo & Lusch, 2004). S-D logic largely abandoned views of specific service characteristics, which had become increasingly blurred in a rapidly changing service ecosystem shaped by new technologies and service delivery innovations. Instead, S-D logic focuses on the processes, patterns, and benefits of exchange, rather than the units of output (i.e., the goods) that are exchanged. Thus, the process of value creation in terms of service-for-service exchanges has become a foundation for service research over the past 10 years (Vargo & Lusch, 2017).
Nevertheless, the early focus on specific service dimensions, such as customer participation, intangibility, and heterogeneity of service delivery, had sparked an interest in management research and served as a catalyst for the emergence of service management as a research field. The intangible nature of services makes service evaluations difficult for customers. (They cannot touch a product to evaluate it.) The customer’s subjective experience of the service employee’s performance therefore often becomes the service itself, and the quality of service to customers is in part driven by the employee. This shifted the emphasis toward the importance of effectively managing employee behavior for successful service delivery, a realization that ignited much of the early research in service management (Bowen & Schneider, 1988).
24 Similarly, the heterogeneity of service delivery, characterized by unpredictability and customization, often prevents employee behavior from being tightly scripted and preplanned. Thus, a variety of employee characteristics and behaviors, such as proactivity, problem-solving, customer orientation, and other customer service behaviors became the focus of management scholars interested in understanding employee performance of frontline service staff (Ryan & Ployhart,
2003). This initial interest in managing frontline employees led to a growing interest by organizational behavior, and organizational psychology scholars in understanding how issues surrounding service delivery impact job design, selection and training, human resource management, emotion regulation, and organizational culture, among others.
25 2.3 Affect in Customer Service Delivery
A popular and important topic in the service research literature focuses on the influence of affect on the interaction between service workers and customers. In the past several decades, the number of empirical studies on trait affect, emotions, and moods has increased exponentially (often coined the “affective revolution”; Barsade et al.,
2003). This research has focused on understanding the role of emotions in organizations. Evidence suggests that employees’ feelings at work impact a wide range of important individual and organizational outcomes, such as work performance, well- being, socialization, and turnover (Brief & Weiss, 2002). Emotions not only impact individuals interpersonally, but workplaces are essentially social ecosystems. Hence, interpersonal interactions may trigger feelings in employees that can be passed onto others, such as coworkers, managers, or customers, and spread throughout the workplace (Hareli & Rafaeli, 2008).
Within the context of service delivery, the important role that the communication and interpersonal interaction between employees and customers play in service transactions suggests that emotions have a significant influence on shaping the interactions between employees, customers, and service organizations. In the early phases of service research, service marketing scholars predominantly focused on service quality and its affective components (Parasuraman et al., 1988). Relatedly, research on customer satisfaction articulated that customers have clear expectations about service- delivery standards that not only involve cognitive components, but also affective components. Thus, research on the role of affect in service delivery has been acknowledged as playing a central role in explaining the nature and outcomes of customer service transactions (Giardini & Frese, 2008). We next review theoretical developments and empirical findings of two affect-related topics within the
26 management and organizational psychology literatures that have received increased attention: emotional labor and emotional contagion.
2.3.1 Theoretical Perspectives on Emotional Labor
The question of how frontline service workers can provide a high-quality customer service experience is a constant topic of interest to service scholars. To create a great service experience for customers, service organizations often require service workers to display positive emotions during service encounters and/or to suppress negative emotions. For example, retail and hospitality employees are usually expected to display certain emotions (i.e., happiness or cheerfulness) and to suppress negative emotions (i.e., annoyance or sadness). There are generally strong social norms in many service industries that require employees to always be friendly and courteous and to provide “service with a smile.” However, requiring service workers to constantly display positive emotions ignores that their actual feelings may often not match those they are expected to display.
In her groundbreaking book “The Managed Heart,” sociologist Arlie Hochschild
(1983) introduced the concept of emotional labor, which is defined as the management of feelings to create an observable emotional display to follow norms. Emotional labor is linked to organizational display rules (Rafaeli & Sutton, 1987), which are emotional display expectations that are either explicitly or implicitly communicated to employees and that define which emotions employees are expected to display and which they should suppress while interacting with customers. Hochschild’s research initiated an active research field within the management literature that has focused on emotional labor in an effort to better understand how service organizations can manage employees’ positive displays to customers (see Grandey & Gabriel, 2015 for a review).
27 In general, service employees are expected to align their displayed emotions with organizationally desired emotions through their choice of different emotional labor strategies (Hochschild, 1983). The two most commonly examined emotional labor strategies within the literature are surface acting and deep acting (Grandey, 2000).
When using surface acting, employees either suppress felt emotions or put on an emotional mask to display the expected emotions without actually feeling them. In contrast, when using deep acting, employees try to create expected emotions within themselves by modifying felt emotions so that a genuine emotional display follows.
Although emotional labor researchers have increasingly expressed concerns about the limitations of these two dominant strategies (e.g., Glomb & Tews, 2004), they are nevertheless the two most dominant emotional regulation strategies within the literature and are therefore the main focus of our discussion here.
Several core theories underpin much of the current emotional labor research.
Gross’ (1998) work on emotional regulation has developed within the social psychology literature and has mostly examined the link between regulation strategies and performance and health outcomes outside of the workplace. However, this literature has been hugely instrumental in shaping current research on emotional labor. Gross proposes two types of emotion regulation strategies, antecedent-focused emotion regulation and response-focused emotion regulation. Antecedent-focused strategies aim to change one’s feelings to prevent certain emotions from developing, whereas response-focused strategies do not aim to adjust one’s feelings but instead focus on emotional expressions. Grandey (2000) was one of the first to comprehensively combine the workplace-related and emotion regulation frameworks into an integrative model of emotional labor.
28 Emotional labor scholars also draw heavily on resource depletion and ego depletion theories to explain the different effects of emotional regulation strategies on service workers (e.g., Hobfoll, 1989; Hobfoll et al., 2018; Baumeister et al., 1998).
Baumeister et al. argue that the effort that people make to regulate and control their emotions depletes their mental resources and potentially decreases their performance.
Regulating emotions via surface acting has been shown to deplete service workers’ mental resources. Empirical evidence shows that because of the depletion of mental resources, mental performance (i.e., memory and complex decision-making tasks) can be impaired if service workers use response-focused emotion regulation (Richards &
Gross, 1999; 2000). In contrast, deep acting strategies, such as reappraisal processes and perspective taking, tend to result in much less cognitive and motivational resource loss compared to surface acting strategies (Goldberg & Grandey, 2007). Although the conclusion that surface acting is more taxing than deep acting has become a commonly held assumption (also see Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011), some findings have challenged this perspective. For example, Liu et al. (2008) concluded that deep acting may require greater efforts to motivate and engage in desired emotions and thus may deplete more mental resources than surface acting.
Although a resource perspective that views emotional labor requirements as an organizational demand currently dominates much of the emotional labor literature, other notable theoretical perspectives are beginning to emerge; it is, however, beyond the scope of this article to provide a comprehensive review. Emotional labor scholars increasingly recognize the interpersonal and dynamic nature of emotional labor. In other words, emotional labor does not occur in a vacuum, but rather is the result of and directly influenced by a dynamic and momentary interaction with a customer. Côté
(2005) suggests that customer service is an interpersonal process and he proposes a
29 social interaction theory of emotion regulation. Côté argues that customers’ reactions to service employees depend on the specific emotional display of service workers. This is supported by recent work that has examined emotional labor through a dynamic, interactive perspective (Gabriel & Diefendorff, 2015, Groth & Grandey, 2012).
Similarly, Van Kleef’s (2009) work on emotion as a social information model suggests that our emotional displays provide those with whom we interact important information that may directly influence their behavior. The model’s explanatory power of understanding customer service interactions involving emotional displays is increasingly recognized by emotional labor scholars. The emotional information sent by service employees invariably affects customers’ attitudes and behaviors, and therefore emotional displays influence customers’ inferences of those emotional cues.
To summarize and integrate different conceptual perspectives and research approaches within the literature, Grandey & Gabriel recently (2015) proposed an integrated model of emotional labor. This model illustrates that emotional labor can be understood as an umbrella term that includes emotional requirements, emotion regulation, and emotion performance as three components of emotional labor. Grandey
& Melloy (2017) further formulated a multilevel perspective of emotional labor that presents the function of different factors in a three-level emotional labor process: event level, person level, and work context level. This model includes work role interaction expectations and work context as moderating effects in emotional labor processes at the work context level, and thus it bridges many of the different research approaches to emotional labor observed in prior research.
30 2.3.2 Emotional Labor: Empirical Findings
With regard to empirical findings, much of prior research has focused on identifying outcomes of emotional labor for service employees, service organizations, as well as customers. As discussed earlier, both surface acting and deep acting can deplete service workers’ mental resources (Goldberg & Grandey, 2007; Liu et al.,
2008). Continuous depletion of such resources can lead to job strain and can reduce service workers’ well-being (Côté, 2005; Grandey, 2003). Because surface acting requires service employees to suppress negative emotions, the continuous experience of negative emotions remains unresolved, which may trigger detrimental effects for service workers’ psychological well-being (Gross & John, 2003). Indeed, meta-analytical results show that surface acting is negatively related to job satisfaction and organizational attachment. The effects of deep acting, however, are less clear, with research often showing either no impact or a positive impact on some well-being indicators (Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011).
Apart from affecting service employees’ psychological well-being, evidence also suggests that emotional labor has direct performance outcomes for employees and organizations. Consistent with ego depletion theory, empirical evidence shows that surface acting can mentally drain employees, which subsequently impairs their task performance (Goldberg & Grandey, 2007, Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011). Surface acting has also been linked to absenteeism (Nguyen et al. 2016) and turnover behavior (Chau et al., 2009; Goodwin et al., 2011), whereas similar patterns have not been observed for deep acting.
Although initially neglected in emotional labor research, recent research has increasingly focused on customer outcomes resulting from emotional labor of service employees. Evidence increasingly supports the notion that customers can tell apart
31 authentic from inauthentic emotional displays, and they react positively to genuine emotional performance by reporting higher customer satisfaction, loyalty, and perceived customer orientation (Hur et al., 2015). For example, Hennig-Thurau et al. (2006) and
Groth et al. (2009) linked the effects of surface and deep acting to customer outcomes, supporting the notion that deep acting is generally a more favorable strategy in the eye of the customer. Grandey et al. (2005) similarly detected a direct effect of display authenticity on customer satisfaction.
Another important stream of research within the emotional labor literature has focused on the organizational display rules rather than the behavioral regulation strategies that employees employ in complying with these display rules. Display rules are defined as a set of shared and latent rules, which service workers are expected to follow for emotional displays at work (Hochschild, 1983). Although one would expect a close relationship between the existence of display rules and congruent employee behaviors to match those display rules, research has shown that individual perceptions of their explicitness as well as the commitment to such rules may vary substantially
(Christoforou & Ashforth, 2015; Gosserand & Diefendorff, 2005).
Display rules also vary greatly across different occupations and service contexts, and as a result most research has been limited to distinguishing between display rules at a very broad level: positive display rules (an expectation to express positive emotions) and negative display rules (an expectation to suppress negative emotions) (Diefendorff
& Richard, 2003). Goldberg & Grandey (2007) showed that positive emotional display rules are positively related to employees’ emotional exhaustion and reduced task accuracy. Also, employees’ perceptions of positive display rules have been shown to be indicative of perceived interpersonal demand in their jobs (Diefendorff & Richard,
2003), supporting the notion that display rules are a perceived job demand. Diefendorff
32 & Richard (2003) showed that service workers’ perceptions of both positive and negative emotional labor demands had a direct impact on their emotional display as well as job satisfaction.
Finally, a stream of research has explored the potential determinants of emotional labor, both with regard to individual difference characteristics of employees and customers as well as job and organizational characteristics. Personality traits such as agreeableness, extraversion, and emotional stability have been linked to people’s emotional reactions (Côté & Moskowitz, 1998). People high in agreeableness and positive affectivity have been found to be more likely to engage in deep acting and display genuine emotions (Diefendorff et al., 2005; Kammeyer-Mueller et al., 2013).
Additionally, research has shown that the incongruence between service workers’ work goals and personal goals impacts their choice of emotion regulation strategies
(Diefendorff & Gosserand, 2003). Employees who value genuine displays of emotions are more likely to choose deep acting as a strategy to regulate their emotional display.
2.3.3 Emotional Contagion
Another major topic area that has been instrumental in helping our understanding of the role of affect in service delivery is emotional contagion. Emotional contagion is defined as a convergence of emotions between people as a result of largely automatic processes, which lead people to imitate the expressive displays of each other
(Hatfield et al., 1994). Previous research argues that emotional contagion can occur through either conscious or unconscious processes (Barsade, 2002).
As discussed earlier, because the emotional displays between service employees and customers constitute a large part of the service experience itself, emotional contagion plays a pivotal role in many customer service contexts. Thus, a better
33 understanding of emotional contagion processes contributes to better customer service outcomes. For example, the emotions transferred from service employees have been shown to play a significant role in service quality assessments and to translate into increased customer satisfaction (Hunt, 1993).
However, even though emotional contagion is frequently discussed as a pivotal process underpinning service delivery, empirical evidence has been relatively scarce.
McBane (1995) argues that emotional contagion is a dimension of salespeople’s empathy, whereas Verbeke (1997) examined emotional contagion as the ability of salespeople to infect and sense others’ emotions. Only few studies present direct evidence that emotional contagion occurs between service workers and customers by measuring the change of affect in customers. Pugh (2001) found that bank employees’ positive emotional displays were positively related to customers’ positive affect.
Hennig-Thurau et al. (2006) used a simulated service exchange to demonstrate that deep acting strategies led to an increase in customer positive affect, which resulted in increased service quality perceptions and loyalty. These results suggest that emotional contagion bridges the emotional display of customers and service workers, although additional empirical research is greatly needed to better understand the role automatic contagion processes can play in impacting customer service interactions and outcomes.
In conclusion, as one of the most frequently studied facets of customer service delivery within the management literature, affect has been shown to greatly impact the service delivery process. Three decades of emotional labor research have shown the positive as well as negative impact of organizational display rules and emotional labor behaviors on employee and customer-related well-being and performance outcomes. In addition, emotional contagion processes, especially automatic and unconscious
34 processes, play an important yet partially unexplored role in shaping service employee and customer outcomes.
2.4 Customer Mistreatment
Frontline service employees are often viewed as the “face of the organization” by customers and therefore need to endure customers’ negative reactions to unmet service expectations or even service failure. Customers’ negative reactions may take a wide range of behavioral and nonbehavioral forms and may even be directed at other customers (e.g., negative word of mouth) or the organization (e.g., exiting the service and avoiding future interactions). However, much of recent management research has focused on customer mistreatment toward frontline employees—arguably the most likely target of dysfunctional customer behavior—as a phenomenon impacting service delivery (also see Koopmann et al., 2015). Within the management literature, interest in customer mistreatment as a research topic has risen exponentially in recent years.
Customer mistreatment is defined as low-quality interpersonal treatment of customers toward service employees (Harris & Daunt, 2013). It is a regular occurrence in many service jobs and may include treating employees in disrespectful, demeaning, unreasonable, or aggressive ways, making illegitimate complaints, or engaging in verbal or physical aggression or threats (Dormann & Zapf, 2004).
Other, and sometimes more extreme, forms of customer misbehavior have been identified in the service literature. Dormann & Zapf (2004) derived a typology that identified four types of customer-related social stressors: verbal aggression, disliked customers, disproportionate customer expectations, and ambiguous customer expectations. McColl-Kennedy et al. (2009) examined customer rage, which they define as an intensive form of customer anger comprising a spectrum of negative emotions,
35 such as ferocity, fury, disgust, and resentment. Other customer behaviors have been identified and labeled as physical aggression and violence, sexual harassment, dysfunctional customer behavior, and deviant behavior (e.g., Grandey et al., 2004;
Harris & Reynolds, 2003).
Although many of these behaviors pose a serious threat to service employees, they are a far less common occurrence than persistent low-level interpersonal mistreatment by customers. There is some lack of construct clarity and some conceptual overlap among the many different forms of customer behavior identified in prior research, although customer mistreatment has emerged as the most commonly measured and observed form of customer misbehavior within the service research literature.
Nevertheless, future research in this area will benefit from more precisely defining and delineating customer mistreatment from related but distinct customer behaviors (e.g., misbehavior driven by economic motives, such as theft and fraud; behavior that may violate social norms unintentionally due to cultural differences or lack of knowledge about specific services).
Given that the number of customer-facing service jobs has increased dramatically in recent years, more employees are placed in positions in which customer mistreatment may occur (Harris & Reynolds, 2003). Many customers do not adhere to organizational or societal norms that dictate compliant and courteous behavior during service consumption. Even mild forms of mistreatment, such as rudeness, can result in significant costs to service employees and organizations and are a key driver of burnout, turnover, and reduced morale among staff members in the service sector (Harris &
Daunt, 2013). Popular mantras such as “the customer is always right” and “the customer is king” have contributed to increased customer expectations and an increased power imbalance in favor of the customer. Indeed, customer evaluations often determine
36 employees’ performance evaluations and remuneration, and the social stigma attached to many service jobs that “serving other people” is inferior (Ashforth et al., 2007) often tips the power balance in the customers’ favor, thus leading to increased opportunity and incidents of customer mistreatment. For example, Grandey et al. (2004) reported that call center employees experience customer mistreatment an average of ten times a day.
2.4.1 Theoretical Perspectives on Customer Mistreatment
Several theoretical perspectives have been put forward to help us understand the nature and consequences of customer mistreatment. Most prominently, and in parallel to much of the literature on emotional labor discussed earlier, resource-based theories have been used to explain why customer mistreatment negatively impacts service employees’ well-being and performance. Hobfoll’s (1989) conservation of resources theory (COR) stipulates that employees’ well-being and performance are dependent on their perceived access to resources. Their behavior is guided by a desire to obtain, retain, protect, and foster personal resources, such as energy and attention (Hobfoll, 1989), and the perceived or anticipated loss of psychological or physical resources triggers anxiety and distress, which motivates behaviors and protection mechanisms that prevent further resource loss.
Customer mistreatment episodes, especially rude or verbally aggressive behaviors, are generally perceived as stressful and unpleasant events and are therefore a direct threat to an employee’s resources. Customers often violate social norms during mistreatment episodes and impose greater job demands on employees, often resulting in a need to regulate emotional displays. With limited opportunities to remove themselves from the situation and bounded by the organization’s service guidelines and behavioral
37 expectations, employees are likely to experience a substantial resource loss when dealing with a misbehaving customer. This may also result in a secondary resource loss and a loss spiral (Groth & Grandey, 2012).
Theories of justice are also frequently invoked in customer mistreatment research, based on the premise that unreasonable customer demands, rude and disrespectful customer behavior, and a violation of social norms are considered a direct violation of interactional and informational justice expectations. Interactional justice is defined as the degree to which individuals are treated with respect and dignity by their interaction partner (Bies & Moag, 1986). Similarly, informational justice refers to a perception of communication that is indicated by clarity and honesty as well as a focus on the explanation that is provided by an interaction partner when justifying behavior
(Bies & Moag, 1986). When an employee is harassed, verbally abused, or spoken to rudely by a customer, they will feel that they have been unfairly treated. Such perceptions of lack of interpersonal and informational justice negatively impact work attitudes and lead to a desire to retaliate against an aggressor (Reb et al., 2006), even though the latter is not generally an option for service employees bound by behavioral and emotional display guidelines set out by the organization.
A third theoretical perspective that has received ample attention in the customer mistreatment literature is affective events theory. Affective events theory views work events as a proximal cause of employees’ affective reactions and explains the link between incidents that occur in their work environment and employees’ affective reactions, performance, and work attitudes (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). Affective events theory suggests that positive-inducing as well as negative-inducing (e.g., customer mistreatment) incidents have a substantial psychological impact on workers’ attitudes, motivation, and behaviors. Customer mistreatment episodes are likely to be
38 perceived as a hindrance or hassle by employees that threatens their work and self- image. The theory further suggests that chronic exposure to negative events may result in lasting behavioral and low-arousal affective consequences. Indeed, customer mistreatment has been shown to elicit different effects on employee behaviors depending on whether they are discrete, intensive events as opposed to continuously occurring, chronic events (Yue et al., 2017). Discrete instances of customer mistreatment may be more likely to result in immediate negative affect (e.g., anger;
Rupp et al., 2008), whereas chronic customer mistreatment may be more likely to impact employee well-being (Baranik et al., 2017).
The diversity of variables and perspectives encountered within the customer mistreatment literature demonstrates a lack of integrative theoretical focus in this rapidly evolving stream of research. One notable exception is the multilevel model of customer mistreatment by Koopmann et al. (2015), which provides a comprehensive and integrative overview of the nomological network surrounding customer mistreatment. One important aspect of customer mistreatment, as correctly pointed out by Koopmann et al., is that the construct has a substantially different conceptual meaning when encountered at the individual level versus the service encounter level.
Customer mistreatment at the service encounter level varies from one customer encounter to the next. This episodic nature of customer mistreatment is more likely explained by immediate affective states of either the employee or customer, employees’ available regulatory resources, as well as customers’ immediate psychological responses to perceived service failure. Episodic customer mistreatment therefore mostly drives proximal, affective, and behavioral reactions by employees. However, customer mistreatment at the individual level refers primarily to a chronic frequency of mistreatment encountered by employees and emphasizes between-person differences
39 among service employees. The experience of repeated mistreatment over long periods of time is qualitatively different from the experience of mistreatment on an episodic level and is likely to induce different coping mechanisms and outcomes. Koopmann et al.’s model suggests that organizational-level characteristics (e.g., display rules, service climate), job-level characteristics (e.g., autonomy, job demands, training), and individual characteristics of the employee and customer (customer orientation, customer status) are more likely predictors of customer mistreatment at this level.
Although much of the prior research has been limited to examining general levels of customer mistreatment, usually by using retrospective survey measures assessing overall levels and frequency of customer mistreatment, research has increasingly adopted an experience sampling method approach that provides insights into the more proximal and immediate effects of customer mistreatment (e.g., Wang et al., 2013; Yue et al., 2017). Disentangling conceptualizations at both levels is therefore important, as both levels may be embedded in different nomological networks as well as underpinned by different theoretical mechanisms. Future research will hopefully help increase the conceptual clarity of customer mistreatment encountered at multiple levels and will help develop a better understanding of the theoretical differences between momentary and chronic types of customer mistreatment.
2.4.2 Customer Mistreatment: Empirical Findings
The majority of research on customer mistreatment within the management literature has focused on the question of whether and what type of negative consequences customer mistreatment has on employees. The negative consequences of customer mistreatment seem self-evident, with research having linked customer mistreatment to a variety of affective, attitudinal, and behavioral outcomes. Employees
40 have been shown to increase their own emotional labor usage in response to mistreatment episodes, both at a within-person and a between-person level (Spencer &
Rupp, 2009; Rupp & Spencer, 2006). For example, Rupp & Spencer (2006) showed that participants in a lab experiment who were mistreated by customers were rated as engaging in more emotional labor than those participants who were not exposed to customer mistreatment. Such responses act as a coping mechanism and a necessary strategy to comply with organizational display rules that require restraint. Customer mistreatment has been shown to trigger discrete emotions and moods (Spencer & Rupp,
2009; Yue et al., 2017), and emotion regulation strategies provide an effective coping mechanism to address these.
Evidence has also shown a direct link between customer mistreatment and employee strain, and emotional exhaustion (e.g., Hur et al., 2016). Service employees who encounter customer mistreatment feel drained emotionally and perceive threats to their self-esteem and sense of control, which impacts their overall well-being, job satisfaction, and stress (Poddar & Madupalli, 2012). Sliter et al. (2010) demonstrate that the link between customer mistreatment and emotional exhaustion, the most frequently studied dimension of burnout, is directly linked to service quality, thus providing some evidence that the link via employee affective reactions and well-being impacts the service performance itself (Dormann & Zapf, 2004). Research on general life hassles has supported the assertion that mistreatment from one’s customers is predictive of negative health outcomes. For instance, Beaudoin & Edgar (2003) found that nurses felt that negative nurse-patient relations were the most damaging to their mental well-being, job satisfaction, and desire to remain with the organization.
Beyond the negative affective and attitudinal reactions of employees to perceived unfair customer behavior, a growing body of evidence suggests that customer
41 mistreatment episodes can push employees even further, by either actively engaging in or passively contemplating retaliatory behaviors. Wang et al. (2011) showed a link between daily customer mistreatment episodes of call center employees and self- reported customer-directed sabotage behavior. Employee sabotage, defined as counterproductive work behaviors by employees to intentionally harm legitimate interests of a customer (Wang et al., 2011), has been shown to be a common response to perceptions of injustice, with a desire to “get even” with the transgressor of the injustice. Skarlicki et al. (2008) were among the first to demonstrate that employees retaliate in ways that are unauthorized by management in coping with customer mistreatment. Their results showed that a significant amount of variance in employee sabotage was explained over and above variance explained by intraorganizational sources of justice, which provides evidence for the importance of customer mistreatment as a source of workplace injustice. Other forms of employees’ behavioral responses include employee incivility directed at customers, low-intensity deviant interpersonal behavior that falls short of actual service sabotage and retaliation intentions, withdrawal behaviors, such as absenteeism and tardiness, as well as reduced service behaviors and sales performance (Sliter et al., 2011; Walker et al., 2014).
A small but growing body of literature has shown that the negative impact of customer mistreatment extends beyond workplace outcomes. Liu et al. (2017) demonstrate a link between daily customer mistreatment experienced by call center employees and self-reported overeating behaviors and sleep quality. This finding provides an important contribution to the literature, because whereas employee sabotage and related behaviors discussed above constitute coping strategies that aim to punish the transgressor, Liu et al.’s research shows the importance of potential avoidance-based coping strategies, which to date have received only scant attention by service
42 researchers. Harris & Reynolds (2003), using a qualitative research design, concluded that consistent customer mistreatment experiences were associated with long-term mental health consequences, such as feelings of degradation, stress, and anxiety.
Finally, Greenbaum et al. (2014) and Chi et al. (2018) have shown a link between customer mistreatment and work-family conflict, relationship conflict, and work withdrawal behaviors, again demonstrating the potential negative impact that customer mistreatment can have far beyond the workplace. These are also passive forms of coping that are mostly driven through negative emotions, and they show that, similar to the research by Liu et al. (2017), the detrimental effects of customer mistreatment can be manifested during subsequent working hours or even during nonwork time by spilling over into family life.
With most empirical studies focusing on the consequences of customer mistreatment, far less attention to date has focused on trying to identify its antecedents.
However, from a preventative point of view, being able to predict which customers and which characteristics of service encounters are more likely to enable customer misbehavior may provide valuable information for service organizations to prevent, or at least contain and minimize, its occurrence. Daunt & Harris (2012) examined customer motives for customer mistreatment and identified perceived financial gain, sensation seeking, Machiavellianism, and self-esteem and personal ego as motivation for engaging in customer mistreatment. Strizhakova et al. (2012) identified several coping strategies (e.g., expression and denial), that, when employed successfully, can reduce customers’ likelihood to experience anger and engage in mistreatment behaviors.
These studies suggest that, in industries where this is possible and feasible, carefully selecting or vetting customers can be an effective prevention strategy for service organizations. Indeed, Doucet’s (2004) research suggests that customer experience and
43 utility for the service they seek to receive hugely impacts the link between hostile behaviors and service quality outcomes. Sliter & Jones (2016) similarly identified a comprehensive list of potential antecedents that can mitigate the occurrence or impact of mistreatment, most notably characteristics of the customer, such as mood, personality, and biases, characteristics of the environment (e.g., environmental stressors), as well as characteristics of the service employees (e.g., customer orientation, personality, and lack of training).
2.5 Customer Service Behaviors
A third and final area of research within the service research literature that we focus on is what can be broadly labeled customer service behavior, that is, the behaviors and skills that frontline employees employ in order to deliver the service experience.
Customer service behavior, also referred to as customer service performance or other variants of this terminology, can be defined as any activities of employees directed toward affecting service quality (Ryan & Ployhart, 2003; Rogelberg et al., 1999).
Scholars and service managers have long been interested in better understanding
“the secret sauce” of service performance that results in delivering service excellence.
However, in the customer service context, task performance is more difficult to define compared to many other types of employee performance, as it depends on the specific service context and can include a huge variety of behavioral, attitudinal, and affective components, ranging from sales performance to emotion management and relationship building. Some of the service characteristics we discussed at the outset (intangibility, heterogeneity, and coproduction by customers) make it difficult to clearly prescribe and quantify specific behaviors. In addition, although some aspects of the service performance of an employee can be objectively measured, the customer experience of
44 service quality, and consequently the performance of the employee, depends on customer expectations, environmental factors (e.g., physical service environment, well- functioning and easy-to-use technology, other customers present during service delivery), and a variety of other factors that are not necessarily under the control of the service employee. Thus, customer service performance is a dynamic and largely subjective experience.
Although understanding and managing customer service behaviors is of huge importance to managers and has received ample empirical attention, the literature is fragmented and is hampered by a proliferation of different definitional and conceptual approaches. We would argue that there is a long tradition and substantial body of literature examining customer service behaviors. However, different scholars in a diverse set of literatures use such different approaches that at first glance may not be considered the same thing.
In the service research literature, which, as discussed earlier, had initially evolved mostly within the marketing discipline, customer service performance has been almost exclusively examined from the customer’s perspective. Given the subjective nature of service performance and difficulties of defining what good performance looks like, customers’ emotional, attitudinal, and behavioral reactions to service delivery have been largely equated with service performance. More specifically, customer satisfaction, perceived service quality, and customer loyalty have become the de facto measures of service performance (e.g., Hunt, 1993).
Contrary to the marketing literature, conceptualizations within the organizational psychology and management literatures have focused on the employee perspective by trying to identify specific behaviors, although this literature has been much slower to evolve. Hogan et al. (1984) identified three general dimensions of service behavior—
45 interpersonal treatment, perceiving customer needs, and providing accurate communication—whereas Frei & McDaniel (1998) identified four dimensions—active customer relations, polite customer relations, helpful customer relations, and personalized customer relations (also see Ryan & Ployhart, 2003). More recently, Di
Mascio (2010) identified three “customer service models” to better understand customer service performance: the act of giving customers what they ask for, efficiently and courteously; accomplishing immediate objective performance metrics (e.g., sales quotas); and forming mutually beneficial relationships with customers.
2.5.1 Theoretical Perspectives on Customer Service Behaviors
In the following section, we identify two of what we believe are the most important and fruitful areas of research into conceptualizing customer service behavior within the management and organizational psychology literature. We hope that our review sparks future research into a more unified approach to understanding employee service performance behaviors. A potential third approach to understanding customer service behavior stems from the emotional labor literature that has focused on the emotion performance as a specific component of emotional labor and a context-specific performance dimension (Grandey & Gabriel, 2015). This stream of research was already discussed in the earlier section on affect in customer service delivery and will therefore not be explored further here. But it deserves mentioning that a focus on observable expressions, such as smiling, eye contact, and other facial and vocal expressions, as indicative of customer service performance (e.g., Pugh, 2001; Barger &
Grandey, 2006) is essentially a means of trying to understand specific customer service behaviors. Relatedly, researchers have also examined and measured affective delivery— defined as a service employee’s act of expressing socially desired emotions during a
46 service transaction (Grandey, 2003)—which primarily focuses on the affective component of employees’ customer service behaviors.
2.5.2 Customer Orientation
The first stream of research focuses on customer orientation. Customer orientation of service employees is defined as the extent to which an employee’s behavior in personal interactions with customers meets those customer needs (Hennig-
Thurau & Thurau, 2003). It is one specific conceptualization of customer service behaviors that has been most prominent in the service research literature and transcends the marketing, management, and organizational psychology literatures: customer orientation. The construct has its origins in Saxe & Weitz’s (1982) influential selling orientation–customer orientation scale, which was originally conceptualized as a behavioral phenomenon that represents a marketing-level concept at the individual level of salespeople.
Although several different conceptualizations and measures are prevalent in the literature today that have varyingly described customer orientation as an individual difference characteristic (Brown et al., 2002) or an attitudinal variable (e.g., Susskind et al., 2003), Hennig-Thurau’s (2004) behavioral approach consisting of four dimensions has been one of the most widely adopted to date, and it has its roots in Saxe & Weitz’s
(1982) original work. It suggests that customer orientation consists of the following four dimensions: technical skills (i.e., the knowledge and technical or motor skills needed to fulfill customer needs), social skills (i.e., the ability to take the customer’s perspective into account during interactions), motivation (i.e., motivation to serve customers), and decision-making authority (i.e., the extent to which service employees feel authorized to decide on issues that concern customers’ interests and needs). Hennig-Thurau suggests
47 that these four dimensions are noncompensatory (that is, all four are necessary in order for customer orientation to be high), although few studies have empirically tested this claim.
Over three decades of research on customer orientation have produced a substantial body of evidence regarding the nomological network surrounding customer orientation. Much of the work has focused on customer orientation as a predictor of customer outcomes, such as perceived service quality and customer satisfaction
(Bettencourt & Brown, 1997; Stock & Hoyer, 2005). For example, Stock & Hoyer
(2005) surveyed dyads of salespeople and their customers across different time points and showed that both attitude-based and behavior-based customer orientation predicted customer satisfaction evaluations. Susskind et al. (2003) similarly demonstrated a link between customer orientation and customer satisfaction, although their results indicate that this relationship is partially explained by frontline employees’ perceived coworker and supervisory support. Hennig-Thurau & Thurau (2003) examined a variety of customer attitudes and found a link between customer orientation and customer trust, customer loyalty, and word of mouth. In short, the empirical evidence suggests that there is a general link between customer-oriented employees and satisfied customers.
Other studies have shown that customer orientation also has a direct impact on more proximal performance-related outcomes and have examined the relationship between customer orientation and employee performance, both self-reported and supervisor-reported (Brown et al., 2002; Stock & Hoyer, 2005), as well as organizational-level performance (Frambach et al., 2016). For example, Chang &
Huang (2011) surveyed airport employees about their customer orientation and found the former to be a predictor of sales revenue generated by the employee, which served as an objective performance measure. Regrettably, many of the studies examining the
48 link between customer orientation and customer outcomes use partial and/or abbreviated measures of customer orientation, and very few studies measure all four dimensions of Hennig-Thurau’s (2004) model, which prevents a more nuanced understanding of the impact of individual dimensions of customer orientation on customer outcomes.
With regard to the determinants of customer orientation, a variety of potential variables have been examined, although the volume of research focusing on determinants pales in comparison to research focusing on outcomes. Saxe & Weitz’s
(1982) initial research suggested that interpersonal antecedents and self-monitoring may predict customer-oriented behaviors. McIntyre et al. (2000) studied real estate salespeople’s self-reported customer orientation, and identified information intake by intuition, information processing by thinking as cognitive styles predictive of customer orientation. These cognitive styles were further related to self-reported performance measures. Others have identified job satisfaction, personality traits, leader behavior, as well as employee affect as potential determinants of employees’ customer orientation
(Brown et al., 2002).
2.5.3 Service-Orientated Citizenship Behaviors
A second set of important customer service behaviors that we identified in the literature has its roots in the management literature on organizational citizenship behaviors (Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1997) and has examined whether effective service performance of employees falls within or outside role-prescribed behaviors. In other words, rather than focusing simply on prescribed task performance, this stream of research suggests that because service delivery is often heterogeneous and difficult to prescribe in advance, employees need to be adaptive and willing to “go the extra mile”
49 to help customers, rather than simply relying on prescriptive role requirements (George
& Bettenhausen, 1990).
Organizational citizenship behavior research has a long history in management and has generally conceptualized employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors as discretionary behaviors that are not formally part of the prescribed role behavior of employees but nevertheless promote organizational effectiveness (e.g., helping other employees or customers) (Organ, 1988). In other words, citizenship behaviors are discretionary extrarole behaviors that go beyond prescribed task performance. Research has found OCB to have several beneficial individual-level consequences, such as higher job satisfaction and job performance and lower turnover and absenteeism behaviors
(Yoon & Suh, 2003; Podsakoff et al., 2009).
Nevertheless, some research points to potential negative side effects of engaging in citizenship behaviors, such as emotional exhaustion and work-family conflict (Deery et al., 2017). At the organizational level, employee citizenship behavior has been found to be related to performance outcomes, such as productivity, efficiency, reduced costs, customer satisfaction, and unit-level turnover (see Podsakoff et al., 2009 for a meta- analytic review). In general, these research findings point to the benefits that citizenship behaviors may provide to employees as well as organizations.
Not surprisingly, service scholars have long taken an interest in examining citizenship behaviors in the service context, and evidence is mounting that many service-oriented behaviors of frontline employees can be conceptualized as customer- oriented citizenship (Hui et al., 2001). For example, Bettencourt and colleagues distinguished between extrarole customer service behaviors and role-prescribed customer service behaviors, and identified three forms of what they call service-oriented citizenship behaviors: loyalty behaviors, participation (i.e., providing information
50 regarding customer needs to the organization), and service delivery behaviors
(conscientiously performing the activities surrounding delivering service) (Bettencourt et al., 2001; Bettencourt & Brown, 1997). These behaviors are conceptualized as being outside of formal role requirements for frontline service employees but nevertheless greatly contributing to overall organizational effectiveness and, more specifically, to a better service delivery experience for the employees and customers involved. Whether customer service behavior is inherently discretionary or role-prescribed has important implications for service managers. For example, Morrison (1997) suggests that organizations must create a suitable social and organizational climate within service organizations, for example by developing a climate of service, in order to enable the discretionary citizenship behaviors of service employees to flourish.
Conceptually closely linked to customer-oriented citizenship behaviors is research on proactive customer service performance, which is characterized by service employees using a self-starting, long-term-oriented, and forward-thinking approach during service delivery (Raub & Liao, 2012; Rank et al., 2007). Research on proactive customer service behaviors is rooted in theories of proactive motivation of employees
(Parker et al., 2010), which suggests that frontline employees use initiative in serving customers rather than waiting for managers to instruct them as to what to do. In other words, they proactively “do the right thing” without having to be told. Proactive customer service has been shown to be related to personal initiative and affective organizational commitment (Rank et al., 2007).
2.6 Future Research Directions
Service research constitutes a diverse and constantly evolving research field.
The multidisciplinary interest in understanding customer service has led to a rich and
51 dynamic set of literatures and theories that is starting to shed light on the why and how of service excellence. The literature reviewed here suggests that the reciprocal interconnectedness between employees, customers, and organizations provides a complex and interrelated set of relationships that need to be disentangled in order to unravel the mysteries of customer service. In the following, we build on the key insights from our review and offer several suggestions for promising avenues of future research that will enhance our knowledge and research impact in this field. We summarize these recommendations in Table 2.
2.6.1 Dynamic Aspects of Customer Service
Most of the prior research on service interactions has pursued a between-person approach to focus on either employee or customer attitudes, behaviors, or affect. That is, most studies have used fairly static research design and measurement approaches, such as survey measures that ask employees or customers to—retrospectively and in general terms—recount their behaviors or cognitions during service encounters. Few studies to date have taken a dyadic approach to examine service episodes between employees and customers as the unit of analysis, although the interrelated and reciprocal nature of such
52 episodes makes a dyadic approach a worthwhile approach (for exceptions, see, e.g.,
Groth et al., 2009; Stock & Hoyer, 2005).
The introduction of experience sampling methods and wearable technology to examine service interactions on a daily or episodic level has been a welcome innovation in service research (Beal, 2015; Wang et al., 2013). However, at the next level, service research needs to explore the dynamic, momentary, and reciprocal nature of service interactions that cannot be captured with most of the traditional research methods used in the past. Interpersonal dynamics between employees and customers unfold in real time. Employee behaviors, attitudes, and emotions can dynamically change as a result of customer behaviors, attitudes, and emotions, and vice versa (also see Côté, 2005;
Grandey & Gabriel, 2015; Groth & Grandey, 2012). For example, within the domain of emotional labor, Gabriel & Diefendorff (2015) have shown that there are moment-to- moment changes in emotional labor use as a result of employees’ interactions with customers. Such unfolding, dynamic models of service interactions have largely been unexplored, but they provide a huge opportunity for more fine-grained examinations of dynamic, moment-to-moment processes in service interactions.
2.6.2 Multilevel Theories and Measurement of Customer Service
Related to the previous point, multilevel models of customer service interactions are needed in order to assess both between-person differences of employees and customers as well as within-person aspects of service delivery. Calls for more research on multilevel aspects of organizational life are certainly not new and are a standard call for action in the discussion section of many management research studies. However, in many parts of the service research literature, empirical evidence on multilevel relationships is still extremely rare, although they are urgently needed in order to break
53 down the micro–macro divide within the field. That being said, several promising papers have recently emerged in order to build such multilevel models across the different domains discussed in this paper (e.g., Grandey & Melloy, 2017; Koopmann et al., 2015). However, many multilevel studies within the service research context only examine relationships at one specific level, without much thought for potential cross- level effects that may link predictors at a higher level to an outcome at a lower level.
Much is to be learned about the role that job-level and organization-level variables play in determining the outcomes of service interactions.
2.6.3 Understanding the Role of Context in Customer Service
As discussed in the introduction, customer service occurs across a huge diversity of different types of services and contexts, which can vary substantially from one case to the next. Services can differ depending on many contextual factors, such as the level of customer involvement or the nature of relationships formed with customers (Bowen,
1990). Lip service is often paid to the importance of context within service research, but for the most part it is just ignored, used as a control variable, or discussed as a limitation of the study. Very little systemic research into the importance of context has occurred in the service research literature. Unlike in other areas of management research (e.g.,
Johns, 2018), virtually all taxonomies and theories to better understand the role of service context have been developed within the marketing field (e.g., Bowen, 1990).
One specific area where future research can further our understanding of the role of context is to examine cross-cultural differences of service delivery. Cultural factors invariably play an important contextual role in the service processes described in this article. Nevertheless, research findings to date provide a limited understanding of how affective processes, customer mistreatment, and customer service behaviors
54 systematically differ depending on the cultural norms of employees, customers, or the larger context in which service interactions take place. While some conceptual frameworks for cross-cultural service interactions have been proposed (e.g., Sharma et al., 2009), empirical research on cross-cultural differences in services remains fairly limited and fragmented. We call on future research to make a concerted effort to better understand cross-cultural differences as well as other contextual effects that are prevalent in service interactions.
2.7 Practical Implications
The conclusions emerging from our review of the service management literature have some notable practical implications for service managers. Research across all three topics covered in our review point to potential strategies that service managers and frontline employees can use to create better customer service experiences for themselves and customers.
First, one of the key practical insights from the emotional labor literature suggests that organizations need to carefully balance the costs and benefits of emotional labor requirements. Although research suggests that positive displays of emotions generally benefit the customer experience, they simultaneously come at a cost to employee well-being (Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011). Although training employees to use more deep acting strategies may alleviate some of the resource-depleting effects of emotional display, the evidence reviewed here suggests that it still may impose a cost on employees, albeit a smaller one. Therefore, managers and employees need to conduct a careful cost-benefit analysis for their specific service context to determine whether the increased gains in customer outcomes are offset by the potential reduction in employee well-being, performance, and withdrawal behaviors that may result from onerous
55 emotional display requirements (also see Kammeyer-Mueller et al., 2013; Goodwin et al., 2011).
Second, a practical insight from the customer mistreatment literature suggests potential mistreatment episodes can be avoided in at least two ways. The more obvious strategy, often found in practical implications sections of empirical research, is to select and train employees to successfully deescalate mistreatment episodes. Another viable strategy is to preemptively identify the potential triggers that may incite customers to mistreat employees so that they can be prevented before they occur. Organizations may select their customers more carefully—at least in services where this is possible—and clearly communicate and manage customers’ service expectations in order to avoid unrealistic expectations that may turn into dysfunctional behavior (Koopmann et al.,
2015). Organizations may even socialize customers and more closely integrate them into the service delivery, thus shifting some of the performance expectations from employees to customers (Groth, 2005).
Finally, our review of customer service behaviors suggests that employee performance is an extremely multifaceted and complex construct. In order to select, train, and reward employees for the “right” behaviors, managers need to carefully assess the customer and organizational needs arising within service-specific jobs. Does a particular service job benefit from scripted behavioral and verbal expectations that follow scripted service guidelines? Or is it desirable for employees to show proactive initiative and go the extra mile to solve unique customer needs in a specific service context? Answering such questions is a necessary first step to better understand what customer behaviors are desired in a specific role and how to achieve them. It is hoped that future academic research will help to develop more theoretically derived models of customer service behaviors that will be useful to service managers and employees.
56
Chapter 3: An Experiment Investigating different facets of customer mistreatment
This chapter presented an investigation of whether two facets of customer mistreatment, intensity of customer mistreatment and target of customer mistreatment, determine the consequences of customer mistreatment. Rather than treating customer mistreatment as a fairly broad and global construct, this study took a more fine-grained look at customer mistreatment by examining different facets of customer mistreatment.
I manipulated target and intensity of customer mistreatment by using video vignettes in an experimental study with 220 undergraduate students. Results reveal that the relationship between two facets of customer mistreatment and service employee’s emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge is mediated by service employee’s negative emotions. In addition, this mediated relationship is stronger when customer mistreatment is high-intensity and employee-targeted. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
3.1 Introduction
As the global economy has become service-dominated, an increasing number of service employees are working at the frontline in order to provide service to their customers. Frontline service employees not only need to deal with stressors associated with low payment, long working hours, and abusive supervision, but also need to face customers who might engage in abuse and mistreatment. Since customer mistreatment can have detrimental consequences for both service employees, such as service performance, emotional exhaustion, physical and mental health (Koopman et al., 2015),
57 researchers and practitioners have shown a great interest in studying customer mistreatment and its consequences on service employees.
Customer mistreatment refers to employees’ perceptions of “low-quality interpersonal treatment employees receive from their customers” (Wang et al., 2011, p.
312). Customer mistreatment can take on different forms, such as customer verbal aggression and unreasonable demand (Dormann & Zapf, 2004; Skarlicki et al., 2008), disrespectfulness (Sliter et al., 2010), rudeness (van Jaarsveld et al., 2010), and even physical misbehavior (McColl-Kennedy et. al, 2009). Customer verbal aggression is one form of customer mistreatment service employees often received from their customers (Berry & Seiders, 2008; Greer, 2015). Customers express verbal aggression in different ways, such as swearing, yelling, threats, sarcasm and condescending remarks (Boyd, 2002; Grandey et al., 2007; Harris & Reynolds, 2003). In some extreme cases, service employees may even receive physical aggression from their customers
(Greer, 2015). For example, customer behavior can physically intimidate and cause discomfort to service providers, such as shoving of service providers, slamming fist on counter, and slamming phone down (Patterson et al., 2009). Furthermore, Harris and
Reynolds (2004) categorized customer’s thoughtless and abusive behaviors based on two key axes: covertness (covert behavior vs. overt behavior) and primary motivation
(financially motivated vs. non-financially motivated). For example, in their study,
Harris and Reynolds (2004) defined compensation letter writers as customers who deliberately write complaint letter to gain monetary reimbursement; oral abusers as customers who orally and vocally disrupt service delivery for either financial or non- financial gain; physical abuser as customers who use overt, aggressive and violent behaviors to satisfy non-financial motives; sexual predators as customers who use oral, behavioral and overt behaviors to express their sexual desires to service employees.
58 Previous researchers have focused on investigating the consequences of customer mistreatment on service employees. For example, Grandey et al. (2004) found the link between customer aggression and service employee’s emotional exhaustion;
Sliter et al. (2011) showed that the interpersonal conflict with customers can cause service employee burnout; Groth and Grandey (2012) argued that a dual-perspective view of customer mistreatment activated a negative exchange spiral in employee- customer service interactions, which will cause customer directed sabotage behavior
(Skarlicki, et al., 2008; Wang et al., 2011); additionally, Chi, Yang and Lin (2018) found that customer mistreatment increased service employees’ daily work withdrawal behavior and work-family conflict; and finally, research completed by Dormann and
Zapf (2004) revealed that customer mistreatment negatively affected service employees’ self-esteem and self-worth.
A recent comprehensive and integrative overview of the nomological network about customer mistreatment presented a multilevel model of customer mistreatment
(Koopman et al., 2015). This multilevel model has distinguished the unfolding processes of customer mistreatment at the individual employee level (higher level) from the unfolding processes of customer mistreatment at the service encounter level (lower level). Specifically, they have discussed unique antecedents, outcomes, mediators and moderators to each level of analysis.
In the current literature of customer mistreatment, affective event theory (AET) developed by Weiss and Crapanzano (1996) and a justice theory identified by Bies and
Moag (1986) are two theoretical lenses often used to explain the outcomes of customer mistreatment. Video vignettes are used to induce similar psychological responses in participants, which enable the study to test both affective event theory and justice theory with participants perception of negative service encounter/injustice events. In regard to
59 affective event theory (AET), Weiss and Crapanzano (1996) argued that work events provided a proximal cause of employees’ affective reactions and explained the link between incidents that occur in employees’ work environment and employees’ affective reactions, performance, and work attitudes. Affective events theory suggests that both positive work event and negative work event (e.g., customer mistreatment) have significant psychological impact on service employees’ attitudes, motivation, and behaviors. More detrimental, affective event theory (AET) suggests that when service employees are chronically exposed to negative events, such as customer mistreatment, it may result in lasting behavioral and low-arousal affective consequences. Previous empirical studies showed that as an affective event, customer aggression will trigger service employees’ strong negative affective states (Grandey, et al., 2002; Rupp &
Spencer, 2006; Rupp et al., 2008)
Another theoretical lens that is often applied to explain the outcomes of customer mistreatment is justice theory (Bies & Moag, 1986). During service encounters, service employees often perceive customer mistreatment as a direct violation of justice expectation. Previous scholars have shown that customer mistreatment violates interpersonal justice and informational justice expectations (Bies,
2001; McCance, et al., 2008). The current justice literature suggests that customer’s violation of interpersonal justice and informational justice can each have a negative impact on service employees work attitudes and behavior (i.e. withdrawal behavior, and retaliatory behaviors) (Colquitt, et al., 2001; Skarlicki & Folger, 1997).
In this study, the impact of customer mistreatment on service employees’ emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge was investigated. These two service employee outcomes have been frequently examined in previous customer mistreatment literature. As an emotionally demanding event, customer mistreatment requires service
60 employees to work effortfully, which often makes service employees emotionally exhausted. For example, a study with flight attendants, travel agents, and shoe sales employees found a positive relationship between service employees’ perceived customer mistreatment and service employee’s emotional exhaustion (Dormann & Zapf,
2004). Compared with supervisor mistreatment and coworker mistreatment, Grandey et al. (2007) found that customer mistreatment explained incremental variance in service employee’s emotional exhaustion. Grandey et al. (2012) found that surface acting, defined as an emotional regulation strategy requiring service employees to express the desired emotions by hiding their genuine emotions (Grandey, 2000), plays a mediating role between patient mistreatment and healthcare workers’ emotional exhaustion.
Although organizational service guidelines and behavioral expectations do not allow service employees to directly retaliate against wrongdoing customers, service employees’ intentions to engage in retaliatory behavior after a customer mistreated them, may often exist. For example, a field study with customer service representatives showed that injustice from customers positively predict employee’s sabotage against customers (Skarlicki, et al., 2008). Similarly, a longitudinal study with call center employees found that daily customer mistreatment positively predicted service employee’s sabotage against customers (Wang et al., 2011). Mullen and Kelloway
(2013) investigated contact center customer service representatives which showed that customer mistreatment positively predicts employee’s retaliation against customers. A study with call center employees found that customer phone rage increases call center employee’s retaliation intentions against the wrongdoing customers (Harris, 2013).
However, most of the previous studies measured customer mistreatment as a fairly broad and global construct, which does not effectively differentiate different types of customer mistreatment. For example, Wang et al. (2011, 2013) developed an 18-item
61 measure of mistreatment scale which asked service employees “how frequently did your customers treat you in the following ways during today’s work”? Some sample items are “yelled at you”, “complained without reason”, “cut you off mid-sentence” and
“refused to listen to you”. Additionally, Shao and Skarlicki (2014) developed a 5-item customer mistreatment measure asking service employees “how often over the past 6 months have you had the following occur from a guest” Some sample items are “said inappropriate things”, “used inappropriate gesture/body language” and “refused to provide information (e.g. photo ID) necessary for you to do your job”. Such broad and global measures of customer mistreatment do not differentiate different types of customer mistreatment based on different facets of customer mistreatment. Not all customer mistreatment is the same. We know little about whether the effect of customer mistreatment varies depending on certain facets of customer mistreatment. Since customer mistreatment can cause negative consequences to multiple parties of service interaction, such as service employees, service organizations and customers themselves, it is important to extend the current research of customer mistreatment from its impacts on different parties of service interaction as identified, to a closer examination at the variability of mistreatment itself. I argue that during service encounters, different target of customer mistreatment and different level of intensity of customer mistreatment are likely to influence the effects of customer mistreatment. Therefore, rather than focus on the antecedents and outcomes of customer mistreatment, the research focuses on different facets of customer mistreatment, and how the outcomes of customer mistreatment (i.e. emotional exhaustion, desire for revenge) vary depending on the facets of customer mistreatment.
The aims of the present empirical study are twofold. First was an attempt to investigate whether different facets of customer mistreatment lead to different outcomes
62 to service employee’s psychological state (e.g. employee negative emotions, emotional exhaustion) and behavior (e.g. desire for revenge). Specifically, the focus was on two different facets of customer mistreatment: target of customer mistreatment, and intensity of customer mistreatment. Second, an attempt to examine the mechanism behind the relationship between customer mistreatment and its consequences to service employees’ emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge.
Our study will contribute to the current customer mistreatment literature in several ways. First, to overcome the limitation of global measurement of customer mistreatment, the examination of the intensity of customer mistreatment allows us to have a more fine-grained look at customer mistreatment. Affective event theory suggested that both positive and negative work event have a substantial psychological impact on employee’s attitudes and behaviors (Weiss & Crapanzano,1996). However, the work event can vary significantly from one to another. For example, the intensity of customer mistreatment episode can be fairly benign or very intense. Thus, it was proposed that the level of intensity of customer mistreatment can significantly change service employees’ feeling of emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge. Specifically, the high-intensity customer mistreatment has stronger impact on service employee’s feeling of emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge.
Second, different from the intensity of customer mistreatment, the target of customer mistreatment focused on the effect of customer’s linguistic expression
(personalized vs. non-personalized) on service employee’s feeling of emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge. During service delivery, customer mistreatment can target either service employees or service organizations. The specific words that customers used in the customer mistreatment episode differentiate organization-targeted customer mistreatment (non-personalized) from employee-targeted customer
63 mistreatment (personalized). For example, for organization-targeted customer mistreatment, customers may say “the airline does not provide good service to its customers”. On the other hand, for employee-targeted customer mistreatment, customers may say “you do not know how to provide good service to your customers”.
However, most previous studies measured customer mistreatment by asking participant’s general feeling about customer mistreatment, which does not capture the difference between organization-targeted customer mistreatment and employee-targeted customer mistreatment. Schema correspondence theory (Brannon & Brock, 1994) argued that the expression with second person pronouns (i.e. you or your) is more likely to activate one’s schema, which can make the expression more persuasive than expression without second person pronouns. Thus, it was proposed that the target of customer mistreatment can significantly change service employees’ feeling of emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge. Specifically, the employee-targeted customer mistreatment has stronger impact on service employee’s feeling of emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge.
Third, the mediating role was examined for service employees’ negative emotions, depicting the mechanism of how different facets of customer mistreatments lead to different consequences of customer mistreatment through the influence of service employee's negative emotions.
A theoretical model was developed to show the link between two different facets of customer mistreatment and their effects on service employees. To induce similar psychological and behavioral responses, a video vignette was used as manipulation for participants in different conditions. The model was tested empirically by analyzing the experimental data of 220 first-year undergraduate students with structural equation
64 modelling. The overall conceptual model guiding the present research is illustrated in
Fig. 1.
Figure. 2. Theoretical model.
3.2 Theoretical background and hypothesis development
Popular mantras like “the customer is always right” and “the customer is king” indicate that service organizations have accepted customer mistreatment as a normative component of the service-customer interaction (Bishop et al., 2005; Grandey et al.,
2004). Since different forms of customer mistreatment can cause different outcomes to service employees, a closer examination of different facets of customer mistreatment can enhance our understanding about customer mistreatment. In this study, the focus was on two different facets of customer mistreatment, namely intensity of customer mistreatment and target of customer mistreatment, and their effects on service employees’ emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge. A discussion of the mediating
65 role of service employees’ negative emotions revolves between these two facets of customer mistreatment (i.e. intensity and target of customer mistreatment) and service employees’ emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge.
3.2.1 Intensity of customer mistreatment and its impacts on service employees’ outcomes
In the service context, customer mistreatment episodes can be fairly benign or pretty intense. For example, dissatisfied customers can mistreat service employees via an impatient facial expression. On the other hand, angry customers can mistreat service employees via aggressive words and behaviors. However, previous studies examined customer mistreatment as a fairly broad and global construct, which does not include the effect of intensity levels in the measures of customer mistreatment. As the intensity of customer mistreatment can largely differ from one service encounter to others, it is argued that the intensity of customer mistreatment can have significant impact on service employee’s well-being and behavior.
The definition of intensity of customer mistreatment is the extent of low-quality interpersonal treatment that service employees received from customers by various ways (i.e. verbal aggression or disrespectful behaviors). When the intensity of customer mistreatment is high, service employees receive more low-quality interpersonal treatment from their customers. Whereas, when the intensity of customer mistreatment is low, service employees receive less low-quality interpersonal treatment from their customers. It is also argued that the high-intensity customer mistreatment can cause stronger negative impact on service employees psychological state (emotional exhaustion) and behavior (i.e. desire for revenge). Previous researchers argue that our conscious mind can detect and discriminate very slight changes in neurobiological
66 activities, such as emotion feelings (Edelman, 2006), and emotional feelings vary from low to high levels of intensity (Izard, 2009). Not all emotion feelings are sufficient to grab people’s attentions. Low intensity emotion feelings (e.g. low emotional arousal) tend to grab much less people’s attention than high intensity emotion feelings (e.g. high emotional arousal) (Izard, 2009). In addition, the intensity of emotional displays can substantially influence the perceived appropriateness of emotional expression (Van
Kleef, et al., 2012). According to Geddes and Callister (2007) dual-threshold model of anger, highly intense anger expression is perceived as inappropriate, which triggers negative responses.
In affective event theory (AET), Weiss and Crapanzano (1996) argued that work events play as a proximal cause of employees’ affective activities. Affective event theory (AET) suggests that work events elicit affective responses which in return, predict affective-driven attitudes (i.e. work attitude) and behaviors (i.e. work performance). Additionally, AET argues that both positive and negative work event have a substantial psychological impact on employee’s attitudes and behaviors (Weiss
& Crapanzano,1996). As a negative affective event, customer mistreatment often induces service employees’ strong negative affective states (Grandey, et al., 2002; Rupp et al., 2008), which in return negatively influences their work attitude and performance.
Also, as a hindrance or hassle, customer mistreatment is likely to threaten service employee’s work and self-image. Furthermore, compared with discrete exposure to customer mistreatment, which is more likely to induce immediate negative affect (i.e. anger) (Rupp et al., 2008), chronic exposure to customer mistreatment is likely to reduce employee’s well-being (Baranik et al., 2017).
Many previous studies focused on the effect of customer mistreatment on service employee’s affective activities and well-being. For example, in their lab
67 experiment, Rupp & Spencer (2006) found that participants who received customer mistreatment reported as engaging in more emotional labor than those participants who were not mistreated by customers. Yue et al. (2017) revealed that customer mistreatment is positively predict service employee’s emotions and moods. Poddar and
Madupalli (2012) argued that customer mistreatment negatively impacts service employee’s overall well-being, job satisfaction, and stress. For example, Hur et al.
(2016) found a direct link between customer mistreatment and service employee’s emotional strain and emotional exhaustion.
Building on AET, Hur, Moon and Han (2015) found that customer incivility significantly predicted service employee’s emotional exhaustion. As negative events, customer mistreatment can lead to service employee’s emotional exhaustion, and I argue that compared with low-intensity customer mistreatment, the high-intensity of customer mistreatment can have stronger negative impact on service employee’s emotional exhaustion.
Hypothesis 1: High-intensity of customer mistreatment leads to a greater
increase in employee emotional exhaustion than low intensity customer
mistreatment.
Service employees often perceive customer mistreatment (i.e. unreasonable demand, rude and disrespectful behavior, a violation of social norms) violates justice expectations in service setting. Justice theory offers a theoretical framework for understanding the process between customer mistreatment and its consequences on service employees. Traditional perspectives of justice have conceptualized justice as different types, such as interpersonal justice and informational justice (Bies & Moag,
1986; Greenberg & Cropanzano, 1993). Interpersonal justice and informational justice are two different types of justice that have been examined in customer mistreatment 68 research recently. Interpersonal justice is defined as the extent individuals perceived they are treated with respect and dignity by their interaction partner (Bies & Moag,
1986). Similarly, informational justice refers to explanations and information given to interaction partners and the perception of this information as adequate and truthful (Bies
& Moag, 1986).
Build upon justice theories (Bies & Moag, 1986), previous scholars have argued that when employees perceive a violation of interpersonal or informational justice, they give negative appraisal to transgressors, and even engage in retaliatory behaviors, such as sabotage (Colquitt et al., 2001; Skarlicki & Folger, 1997). Wang et al. (2011) found that as a common response to customer mistreatment episodes, call center employees reported higher desire to “get even” with the customers who violates the justice expectations. Similarly, a field study with customer service representatives showed that injustice from customers positively predict employee’s sabotage against customers
(Skarlicki, et al., 2008). Mullen & Kelloway (2013) researched contact center customer service representatives showed that customer mistreatment positively predicts employee’s retaliation against customers.
Thus, it is proposed that the intensity of customer mistreatment can influence service employees’ perception of customer’s violation of justice expectations.
Specifically, service employees may perceive high-intensity customer mistreatment a more serious violation of justice expectation than low-intensity customer mistreatment, which can lead to more retaliatory behavior towards customers.
Hypothesis 2: High-intensity customer mistreatment leads to a greater increase
in employee desire for revenge than does low-intensity customer mistreatment.
69 3.2.2 Target of customer mistreatment and its impact on service employees’ outcomes
Another facet of customer mistreatment that can alter the extent of service employees’ emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge is the target of customer mistreatment. Evidence suggests that the target of customer mistreatment can have differential impacts on service employees. For example, Walker et al. (2017) found that compared with non-targeted customer’s verbal aggression, targeted customer verbal aggression makes the relationship between customer aggressive words and employee incivility more pronounced. However, most previous studies measured customer mistreatment by asking participant’s general feelings about customer mistreatment, which does not capture the difference between organization-targeted customer mistreatment and employee-targeted customer mistreatment. It is proposed to extend the current customer mistreatment literature by categorizing customer mistreatment into employee-targeted customer mistreatment and organization-targeted customer mistreatment. Employee-targeted customer mistreatment in this study is defined as customer’s uncivil behaviors that personalize and target service employees. On the other hand, organization-targeted customer mistreatment refers to customer’s uncivil behaviors that target organizations rather than service employees. For example, customers can mistreat service employees by using the second-person pronouns (e.g. you are not able to provide good service to your customers) or customers can mistreat service employees by blaming the service organization (e.g. the airline is not able to provide good service to its customers). While agitated customers may not differentiate between these two targets when engaging in customer mistreatment, they may have a differential impact on employees, who may either attacked directly (i.e., personally) or indirectly (as a representative of the organization at large).
70 Schema correspondence theory (Brannon & Brock, 1994) argues that messages that reflect one’s self-schemas will be more persuasive than messages that do not reflect one’s self-schemas. Baldwin (1992) argued that self-schema can be seen as how self is experienced in that interpersonal situation, and people are more sensitive and effective in processing schema-relevant information. For example, empirical evidence showed that participants with a self-schema of independence were more responsive to behaviors that violates their independence (Fong & Marcus, 1982). During service delivery, customer mistreatment can target either service employees or service organizations. The specific words that customers used in the customer mistreatment episode differentiate organization-targeted customer mistreatment (non-personalized) from employee- targeted customer mistreatment (personalized). Brannon and Brock (1994) argued that compared with using general words (i.e. non-personalized words), using second-person pronouns (i.e. you, your) can cause stronger impact on interpersonal interaction.
Accordingly, Simmons et al. (2008) found a negative relationship between the use of second-person pronouns and relationship quality.
Therefore, it can be argued that although both employee-targeted and organization- targeted customer mistreatment can cause negative consequences to service employees
(i.e. emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge), use of second person pronouns (i.e. you or your) in employee-targeted customer mistreatment is likely to activate service employee’s schema, which can cause more negative feelings of service employees.
As discussed earlier, customers’ rude and disrespectful behavior is often perceived by service employees as a violation of social norms in workplace interaction.
Customer’s violation of such norms is considered as a direct violation of justice expectations. Interpersonal justice and informational justice are two different types of justice that have been examined in customer mistreatment research recently.
71 Interpersonal justice is defined as the extent individuals perceived they are treated with respect and dignity by their interaction partner (Bies & Moag, 1986). Similarly, informational justice refers to explanations and information given to interaction partners and the perception of this information as adequate and truthful (Bies & Moag, 1986).
During a service encounter, it is not uncommon to see customers deliver unfair informational and interpersonal treatment to service employees. Indeed, previous research has identified customer mistreatment as a violation for both interpersonal and informational justice (Bies, 2001; Rupp, et al., 2007; Rupp, et al., 2008).
Some recent studies using call center simulations found that customer injustice behavior cause service employees’ immediate affective changes such as anger, emotional exhaustions, tiredness, or negative mood (Rupp & Spencer, 2006; Goldberg
& Grandey, 2007; Wegge, et al., 2007). Moreover, the traditional justice literature argues that when employees perceive the violation of interpersonal or informational justice, they give negative appraisal to transgressors, and even engage in retaliatory behaviors, such as sabotage (Colquitt et al., 2001; Skarlicki & Folger, 1997). A multifoci justice perspective (Cropanzano, et al., 2001; Lavelle, et al., 2007) would suggest that employees’ reactions to injustice are commonly directed toward the corresponding source of injustice. For example, Rupp and Spencer (2006) found that wronged employee’s retaliatory behavior targets the perceived source of injustice.
Previous empirical studies have shown that customer mistreatment of service employees has led to employee sabotage against customers (Skarlicki et al., 2008).
Thus, building up on schema correspondence theory (Brannon & Brock, 1994) and justice theories (Bies & Moag, 1986), I argue that service employees are more likely to perceive employee-targeted customer mistreatment a more serious violation of
72 justice expectations, which can lead to stronger negative impact on service employees’ emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge. Thus, the hypotheses are:
Hypothesis 3: Employee-targeted customer mistreatment leads to a greater
increase in employee emotional exhaustion than does organization-targeted
customer mistreatment.
Hypothesis 4: Employee-targeted customer mistreatment leads employees a
greater increase in employee desire for revenge than organization-targeted
customer mistreatment.
3.2.3 The mediating mechanism of service employees’ negative emotions
Another aim of the paper is to examine the mechanism behind the relationship between customer mistreatment and its consequences to service employees. Affective event theory (AET) suggests that work events generate specific emotions, and those emotions lead to affect-driven behavior (Weiss & Beal, 2005). In service encounters, emotions may constitute a critical link between customer mistreatment and its impact on service employees’ emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge. Therefore, an examination of the mediating role of employee negative emotions in the relationship between customer mistreatment and employee outcomes will be conducted.
Previous research has argued that customer aggression as an affective event can induce strong negative affective states (Grandey, et al., 2002; Rupp, et al., 2008) such as service employee’s negative emotions (Basch & Fisher, 2000). Given the power difference between customers and employees and given that the service context usually does not allow service employees to choose their customers or withdraw from negative events, service employees are required to provide high-quality services to customers
73 and deal with negative emotions caused by customer mistreatment simultaneously, which can require service employees to use up substantial cognitive resources (Hobfoll,
1989). Such substantial resource loss can make service employees feel emotional exhausted. For example, Winstanley and Whittington (2002) conducted a study in the
UK’s health care industry showing that visitor’s verbal aggression significantly and positively related to health care employees’ emotional exhaustion. Similarly, Grandey et al. (2007) found that customer verbal abuse significantly predicted service employee’s emotional exhaustion. A cross-occupation study conducted in Germany showed that customer verbal aggression was significantly associated with service employees’ emotional exhaustion in different service occupations (Dormann & Zapf, 2004).
Furthermore, previous studies found that as the violation of justice expectations, customer mistreatment significantly predicted service employees’ negative emotions
(Rupp et al., 2007; Rupp et al., 2008; Spencer & Rupp, 2009). Accordingly, recent conceptual work on deontic justice argues that injustice will trigger judgements of moral wrongdoing, elicit negative emotions, as well as result in retaliation against the transgressor (Folger, 2001; Folger & Skarlicki, 2008). To alleviate their negative emotions and restore justice, service employees may take the deontic action to directly/indirectly punish the customers (Cropanzano, et al., 2003).
AET (Weiss & Crapanzano, 1996) and justice theories (Bies & Moag, 1986), will be integrated to identify that customer mistreatment can cause service employees negative emotions, which predicts service employees’ emotional exhaustion, and their retaliatory behaviors against customers. Thus, it is hypothesized that the relationship between customer mistreatment and its impact on service employees’ emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge is mediated by service employees’ negative emotions.
74 Hypothesis 5: The relationship between intensity of customer mistreatment and
(a) employee emotional exhaustion and (b) employee desire for revenge is
mediated by employee negative emotions.
Hypothesis 6: The relationship between target of customer mistreatment and (a)
employee emotional exhaustion and (b) employee desire for revenge is mediated
by employee negative emotions.
3.3 Method
3.3.1 Participants
Two hundred twenty-four first-year undergraduate students from a large
Australian university participated the lab study for course credit. All students offer large introductory management course need to register for an online platform and then participate in several research studies throughout the semester in order to receive course credit. Four participants’ data were discarded from the original 224 participants sample, as their responses did not correctly answer several attention filter questions that were included in the study. The final sample consisted 220 participants, 55% females (121), and 45% males (99). Of the sample, 73.2% participants (161) were Asian and 19.5% participants (43) were Caucasian, which is reflective of the population of the university.
The average age was 19 years old (SD = 1.25). In total, 50.5% participants (111) had no work experience in the service industry, whereas 49.5% participants (109) reported at least some work experience in the service industry.
75 3.3.2 Experimental manipulations and procedures
Using a 2 x 2 between-subject factorial design, I manipulated the target of customer mistreatment (organization-targeted versus employee-targeted) and intensity of customer mistreatment (low intensity versus high intensity). I randomly assigned participants to one of the four experimental conditions, organization-targeted/low intensity (57), organization-targeted/high intensity (54), employee-targeted/low intensity (56), employee-targeted/high intensity (53).
When participants arrived for the study, they were first asked to complete a survey which contained demographic and control variables. They then watch a 7-minute video which depicted service interaction between an airport service employee and the passenger. As mentioned above, each participant was randomly assigned to watch one of the four versions of the video. Upon completion of the video, participants then completed second survey which included all of the study variables.
3.3.3 General Research design
Video-based methods were used to investigate the effect of different facets of customer mistreatment. Video-based methods were well-developed and applied by many researchers in management and psychology field (Dallimore, et al., 2007;
Grandey et al., 2005; Seawright & Sampson, 2007). One of the advantages of using video methods is that videos can induce similar psychological and behavioral responses compared to studies conducted in real service settings (Bateson & Hui, 1992).
Moreover, compared with written vignette, the interpretation of video vignette generates less error variance than written vignette (Seawright & Sampson, 2007). By inducing similar psychological and behavioral responses, this study can use participants’ perceptions of negative service encounter/injustice event to test both affective event
76 theory and justice theory. More details about video development will be discussed in the following section.
3.3.4 Script Development
Scripts were carefully developed for four different service encounters with the aim of having four videos identical service encounters that only differ in the intensity and target of customer mistreatment. First, the scripts were drafted based on a British documentary Airline (1998), which showcased some unpleasant real-life service encounters between passengers and airport service employees. Second, people were invited who have at least several years of service experience to review these scripts based on their real-life service experience with customers. Their comments were incorporated to modify these four scripts. After that, several academics helped to check whether the variability among these four scripts soundly reflect the manipulation of this study.
3.3.5 Video development
Videos were created using two student actors to portray an airport employee
(female) and passenger (male) at a lost luggage service counter of a fictitious airline.
The videos described a service delivery in which a passenger asked an airport service employee to find his two bags because the passenger had just arrived at a major international airport and could not locate his two bags. The camera was placed approximately three meters away from the front of the passenger so that his face was in clear view. The airport service employee could be seen only from her back, so her facial expressions were not visible. Videos were created with the aid of several props in order to realistically simulate a lost luggage service counter.
77 The four videos vary depending on two different facets of customer mistreatment: target of customer mistreatment and intensity of customer mistreatment.
Two dimensions were created for target of customer mistreatment: employee-targeted customer mistreatment and organization-targeted customer mistreatment. When customer mistreatment targeted service employees, the passenger used second-person pronouns (e.g., you lost my bags) when speaking with the airport service employees.
Whereas when customer mistreatment targeted service organization, the passenger spoke to the airport service employee by using third-person pronouns by referring to the organization (e.g., the airline lost my bags). In addition, two dimensions were created for the intensity of customer mistreatment: low-intensity customer mistreatment and high-intensity customer mistreatment. When the intensity of customer mistreatment was low, the passenger spoke and behaved impatiently towards the airport service employee
(e.g., Could you just find a better way to get my bags back to me). In contrast, when the customer mistreatment was highly intense, the passenger spoke and behaved aggressively and disrespectfully to the airport service employee (e.g., you’re the worst service employee I’ve ever seen). Sample scripts are listed in Table 1, and the complete scripts for four different conditions are presented in Appendix B.
78 Table 3 Sample Scripts of Passenger and Airport Service Employee Interaction
Experimental Roles Interaction Content Conditions I’m sorry to hear that your bags aren’t Airport Employee Organisation-targeted/ here Mr. Cheng. Low-intensity The airline should be responsible to get Passenger my bags back to me. I’m sorry to hear that your bags aren’t Airport Employee Employee-targeted/ here Mr. Cheng. Low-intensity You lost my bags, you should help me Passenger get my bags back to me. I’m sorry to hear that your bags aren’t Airport Employee Organization-targeted/ here Mr. Cheng. High-intensity This airline is terrible, it’s the worst Passenger airline I’ve ever seen! I’m sorry to hear that your bags aren’t Airport Employee here Mr. Cheng. Employee-targeted/ High-intensity This is the way you serve your customer? Passenger You’re the worst service employees I’ve ever seen!
3.3.6 Measures
The first survey contained measures of demographic variables and control variables. For the second survey, participated were asked to complete measures of negative emotions, emotional exhaustion, and desire for revenge. All items used are listed in Table 2.
Negative emotions. To measure service employees’ negative emotions, two items (i.e., anger and irritation) were used from Bono, Foldes, Vinson, and Muros’
(2007). Participants were asked to evaluate how much they think the airport employee feels anger and irritation during the work day on which the interaction took place on a
5-point Likert-type scale (1 = not at all to 5 = extremely). The Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was .76.
Emotional exhaustion. Five items based on Wharton (1993) were utilized to measure emotional exhaustion. Participants were asked to rate items regarding how they
79 think the airport employee will feel after her conversation with the passenger. A five- point response scale was used ranging from 0 = not frequent at all to 5 = very frequent.
A sample item is “the airline employee will feel emotionally drained from her work”.
The Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was .92.
Desire for revenge. five items were taken from Bradfield and Aquino (1999) to measure desire for revenge. Participants were asked to rate the extent to which they think the airport employee will have the specific thoughts towards passengers. Sample items are “I want to see them get what they deserve”. And “I wish that something bad would happen to them”. Participants provide ratings to each item using a five-point
Likert-type scale ranging from 1 = not at all true to 5 = very much. The Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was .89.
Control variables. Several control variables were included in the analyses to rule out possible confounding effects. First, participants’ gender (0 = male; 1 = female) were controlled for because there is evidence to suggest that males tend to exhibit overt angry reactions more frequently than females (Spielberger, 1996). Moreover, participants’ previous service experience was controlled for because participants who previously worked in service industry are more likely to understand the difficulties and complexities of customer service (Carstensen, 1992). Third, participants’ negative affectivity was controlled for because previous research has shown that individuals higher in negative affectivity are more sensitive to negative stimuli and are more emotionally reactive to those stimuli (Bolger & Zuckerman, 1995). Negative affectivity was measured in the first survey using 10-item negative affect scale from Watson,
Clark, and Tellegan’s (1988) positive affect negative affect scale (PANAS). Two sample items are “hostile” and “irritable”. Responses range from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. The Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was .86.
80
Table 4. List of survey items and results of confirmatory factor analysis Standardized coefficient Employee negative emotions “How much will the airline employee feel the following emotions during that workday?” Anger .81 Irritation .75 Employee emotional exhaustion “How do you think the airline employee will feel after her conversation with the passenger?” The airline employee will feel emotionally drained from her .80 work. The airline employee will feel used up at the end of the workday. .85 The airline employee will feel dread getting up in the morning .82 and having to face another day on the job. The airline employee (April) will feel burned out from her work. .92 The airline employee (April) will feel frustrated by her job. .79 Employee desire for revenge “To what extent do you think the airline employee will have the following thoughts towards passengers?” I’ll make them pay. .73 I wished that something bad would happen to them. .87 They’re bad. .81 I want to see them get what they deserve. .78 I want to see them hurt and miserable. .81 N = 220. All factor loadings are significant at p < .001
81 3.4 Results
3.4.1 Manipulation Check
Participants were asked to rate the following: (a) “How intense do you think the way the passenger spoke to the service employee”, (b) “How much do you think the passenger blamed the service employee”, and (c) “How much do you think the passenger blamed the airline”. Results indicate that participants in the high-intensity condition (M = 4.29, SD = 0.77) reported a greater extent of perceived intensity than participants in low intensity condition (M = 2.67, SD = 1.17), F (1, 218) = 145.80, p
< .001. Further, participants in the organization-targeted condition (M = 4.19, SD =
1.02) reported more blame on the airline than participants in employee-targeted condition (M = 2.72, SD = 1.22), F (1, 218) = 92.90, p < .001. Additionally, participants in the organization-targeted condition (M = 1.91, SD = 0.98) reported less blame on the employee than participants in employee-targeted condition (M = 3.41, SD = 1.62), F (1,
218) = 69.52, p < .001. These findings suggest that the videos successfully manipulated participants perception on both target of customer mistreatment and intensity of customer mistreatment.
82 3.4.2 Reliability and Validity Assessment
We report the means, standard deviations, and correlation coefficients, and reliability estimates (Cronbach’s alphas) of all variables in Table 2. The reliability of all scales is satisfactory, with ⍺ scores ranging from .76 to .92.
Table 5 Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlationsa M SD 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 1. Gender b 0.45 0.50 2. Service 0.50 0.50 -.02 experience c 3. Negative 2.40 0.69 -.05 -.19** (.86) affectivity 4. Target of 0.50 0.50 -.07 .02 -.04 customer mistreatment 5. Intensity of 0.49 0.50 .05 -.06 .09 .00 customer mistreatment 6. Negative 3.12 1.03 .14* .09 -.05 .17* .37** (.76) emotions 7. Emotional 3.41 1.00 -.02 .04 .06 .19** .46** .52** (.92) exhaustion 8. Desire for 1.87 0.90 .05 -.02 .14 .18** .37** .53** .42** (.89) revenge *p < .05 (two-tailed). **p < .01 (two-tailed). a N = 220. Values along diagonal represent internal consistency estimates. b Coded as 0 = Female, 1 = Male. c Coded as 0 = No, 1 = Yes.
83
3.4.3 Structural Equation Modeling and Mediation Analysis
Structure equation modelling was conducted to test all hypotheses in the theoretical model. Overall, the fit statistics for our theoretical model indicate a good fit:
χ2 (126, N = 220) = 1958.2, p < .001; CFI = .944; TLI = .926; SRMR = .040; RMSEA
= .070.
For the structural model, all path coefficients were estimated and controlled for participants’ gender, service experience, and negative affectivity simultaneously. The analysis results for direct effects and indirect effects are showed in Table 3.
Recent research has argued that structure equation modelling is a superior method to test mediation effects (Iacobucci, 2008). As Iacobucci suggested, we modeled one structural model (instead of modelling a series of models) which includes both direct and indirect paths simultaneously. Moreover, we employed a bootstrapping procedure (using 5000 re-samples) to test the significance of the mediating effect and all direct and indirect effects. Recently, researchers have advocated that the use of bias- corrected bootstrapping confidence interval is a superior method which is preferred over the Sobel test (Sobel, 1982) (as cited in Cheung & Lau, 2009). A confidence interval not including zero indicates a statistically significant effect. Thus, rather than only reporting
P-value, we also reported bias-corrected bootstrapping confidence interval for all direct and indirect effects.
Table 3 shows that the direct effects from intensity of customer mistreatment to
employee emotional exhaustion was significant (β ICM → EEE = .26, 95% CI [.10, .41]), indicating that high-intensity customer mistreatment led to more emotional exhaustion than low-intensity customer mistreatment. Thus, Hypothesis 1 was supported. However, our data analysis results did not support for other three direct paths. Direct path from
intensity of customer mistreatment to employee desire for revenge (β ICM → EDFR = .11, 84 95% CI [-.04, .26]) was not significant. Similarly, direct paths from target of customer
mistreatment to both employee emotional exhaustion (β TCM → EEE = .08, 95% CI
[-.04, .20]) and employee desire for revenge (β TCM → EDFR = .04, 95% CI [-.08, .16]) were not significant. Therefore, Hypotheses 2-4 were not supported.
However, the direct path from the independent variable to the dependent variable is not a significant prerequisite for an existing mediating effect (Kenny, et al.,
1998). Rather, if the path from the independent variable to the mediator and from the mediator to the dependent variable are both significant, the mediating effect may exist.
As summarized in Table 3, the direct effect from intensity of customer mistreatment to
employee negative emotions was significant (β ICM → ENE = .42, 95% CI [.28, .55]); the direct effect from employee negative emotions to employee emotional exhaustion was
significant (β ENE → EEE = .50, 95% CI [.28, .70]). The total standardized indirect effect from intensity of customer mistreatment to employee emotional exhaustion was
significant (β ICM → ENE → EEE = .21, 95% CI [.11, .33]). Thus, Hypothesis 5a was supported. Similarly, the mediating effect of employee negative emotions between intensity of customer mistreatment to employee desire for revenge was significant (β ICM
→ ENE → EDFR = .25, 95% CI [.15, .36]). Thus, Hypothesis 5b was supported. Addition, as hypothesized, indirect relationships were found from target of customer mistreatment to employee emotional exhaustion and employee desire for revenge. The mediating effect of employee negative emotions between target of customer mistreatment and employee
emotional exhaustion was significant (β TCM → ENE → EEE = .10, 95% CI [.03, .20]); the mediating effect of employee negative emotions between target of customer
mistreatment and employee desire for revenge was significant (β TCM → ENE → EDFR = .12,
95% CI [.04, .22]). Therefore, Hypothesis 6a and 6b were supported.
85 Figure. 3. Estimated structural model. Note: Goodness-of-fit summary: χ2 (126, N = 220) = 1958.2, p < .001; CFI = .944; TLI = .926; SRMR = .040; RMSEA = .070. *p < .05 (two-tailed); **p < .01 (two-tailed).
86
Table 6 Results of bootstrapping analysis: Direct effects and Indirect Effects for Mediation Models
Direct and indirect path Standardized Standardized 95% Confidence direct effect indirect effect interval Direct path ICM1 → EEE2 .26** (.00) .10, .41 ICM → EDFR3 .11 (.14) -.04, .26 TCM4 → EEE .08 (.18) -.04, .20 TCM → EDFR .04 (.50) -.08, .16 ICM → ENE5 .42** (.00) .28, .55 TCM → ENE .21** (.00) .07, .35 ENE → EEE .50** (.00) .28, .70 ENE → EDFR .58** (.00) .44, .73 Indirect path ICM → ENE → EEE .21** (.00) .11, .33 ICM → ENE → .25** (.00) .15, .36 EDFR TCM → ENE → .10* (.01) .03, .20 EEE TCM → ENE → .12* (.01) .04, .22 EDFR *p < .05 (two-tailed) **p < .01 (two-tailed) 1 Intensity of customer mistreatment, coded as 0 = Low intensity, 1 = High intensity. 2 Employee emotional exhaustion. 3 Employee desire for revenge. 4 Target of customer mistreatment, coded as 0 = Organization-targeted, 1 = Employee- targeted. 5 Employee negative emotions.
87
Table 7 Summary of Hypotheses and Outcomes
Hypothesis 1: High-intensity of customer mistreatment leads to a great increase in employee emotional exhaustion than does low-intensity of customer Supported mistreatment.
Hypothesis 2: High-intensity of customer mistreatment leads to a great increase in employee desire for revenge Rejected than does low-intensity of customer mistreatment.
Hypothesis 3: Employee-targeted customer mistreatment leads to a great increase in employee emotional exhaustion than does organization-targeted Rejected customer mistreatment.
Hypothesis 4: Employee-targeted customer mistreatment leads employees a great increase in employee desire for revenge than organization-targeted Rejected customer mistreatment.
Hypothesis 5: The relationship between intensity of customer mistreatment and (a). employee emotional exhaustion, (b). Employee desire for revenge is Supported mediated by employee negative emotions.
Hypothesis 6: The relationship between target of customer mistreatment and (a). employee emotional Supported exhaustion, (b). Employee desire for revenge is mediated by employee negative emotions.
88 3.5 Discussion
3.5.1 Theoretical implication
Customer mistreatment is a complex and multidimensional construct. Previous research has predominately focused on investigating the antecedents and consequences of customer mistreatment (Koopmann et al., 2015), with little attention being paid to the multidimensionality of customer mistreatment, which can significantly influence the consequences of customer mistreatment. With this study, the impact of two facets were examined for customer mistreatment on service employees’ emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge, an important yet under researched aspects of customer mistreatment research. A theoretical model of the differential effects was tested of two facets of customer mistreatment, namely target of customer mistreatment and intensity of customer mistreatment, on service employees’ emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge. I also examined the mediating role of service employees’ negative emotions in this relationship. I did so by using video vignettes of a service encounter involving customer mistreatment in a lab study with 220 undergraduate students. By focusing on the two facets of customer mistreatment, I contribute to the customer mistreatment literature in that I provide empirical evidence for the multidimensionality of customer mistreatment, which extends our understanding of the construct. AET and justice theory were used to explain how these two different facets of customer mistreatment can differentially impact service employees’ emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge.
The results of this research provide several important contributions to the customer mistreatment literature.
First, I extend the scope of customer mistreatment research by narrowing down our attentions on the two facets of customer mistreatment. On the basis of AET and justice theory, empirical support was found for the direct relationship between intensity
89 of customer mistreatment and service employees’ emotional exhaustion. Specifically, compared with participants in low-intensity customer mistreatment condition, participants in exposed to high-intensity customer mistreatment reported the experience of more emotional exhaustion. This finding contributes to the customer mistreatment literature in that our study is one of the first to provide evidence that the intensity of customer mistreatment differentially influences service employees’ emotional exhaustion. Interestingly, support was not found for the direct relationship from intensity of customer mistreatment to service employees’ desire for revenge. Similarly, support was not found for the direct relationship from target of customer mistreatment to service employees’ emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge. However, those nonexistent direct relationships from the two facets of customer mistreatment to service employees’ outcomes could indicate the existence of mediating mechanisms behind the relationship between the two facets of customer mistreatment and service employees’ outcomes.
Second, although three of the proposed direct relationships were not supported, an affect-based mechanism was found to explain the relationship between the facets of customer mistreatment and service employees’ emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge. Consistent with the AET and justice theory the results suggest the mediating effect of service employees’ negative emotions in the relationship between the facets of customer mistreatment and service employees’ affective outcomes (i.e. emotional exhaustion) and behavioral outcomes (i.e. desire for revenge). In addition, the results further reinforce the value of discrete emotions (i.e. anger and irritation) in explaining the effects of customer mistreatment on service employees’ emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge. Specifically, the relationship between intensity of customer mistreatment and service employees’ emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge was
90 mediated by service employees’ negative emotions. Similarly, the relationship between target of customer mistreatment and service employees’ emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge was mediated by service employees’ negative emotions.
3.5.2 Practical implication
In today’s highly competitive service industry, frontline service managers need to be cognizant of the consequences of customer mistreatment. As noted by previous scholars, customer mistreatment can lead to various negative consequences, such as service employees’ emotional dissonance (Karatepe, et al., 2009), loss of resources
(Wang et al., 2011), and retaliatory behavior (Skarlicki et al., 2008). All these outcomes are detrimental for service employees. Frontline service managers should aim to employee some techniques to reduce these negative effects of customer mistreatment, such as staff selection, support, and training for service employees. The results of this study showed that compared with organization-targeted customer mistreatment, employee-targeted customer mistreatment can lead to stronger negative outcomes to service employees’ well-being and work behavior. Service managers should train their service employees to effectively manage the target of customer mistreatment. For example, service managers can train service employees how to let customers understand that the frontline service employee is not the person who caused problems to the customers. By doing so, customer may stop the employee-targeted customer mistreatment, which can effectively reduce the negative effects of customer mistreatment on service employee’s well-being and work behavior. Similarly, as the study results found that high-intensity of customer mistreatment causes more serious consequences to service employees’ well-being and work behavior, service managers can train service employees how to effectively reduce the intensity of customer
91 mistreatment. For example, rather than to confront aggressive customers with similar aggressive manner, service managers should train service employees how to effectively deescalate the customer mistreatment episode. For example, service employees can deescalate the customer mistreatment episode by providing alternative solutions to meet customers’ request. By doing so, the intensity of customer mistreatment may be significantly reduced, which can weaken the negative effects of customer mistreatment on service employees’ well-being and work behavior. The study results are consistent with AET, which suggests that customer mistreatment can trigger service employees’ negative emotions, leading to service employees emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge. Hence, frontline managers should consider more specific training to minimize these negative outcomes. Specifically, service managers could provide training to their employees regarding how to effectively manage their negative emotions when dealing with rude and disrespectful customers (Chi et al., 2013). In addition, since the study results showed that customer mistreatment differs based on different facets of customer mistreatment, using the real-life customer mistreatment cases in service employee training could showcase service employees how to effectively deal with different types of customer mistreatment. Apart from providing effective training to service employees, service managers could show caring to service employees’ emotional state after the negative interactions with customers (Koopmann et al., 2015).
3.5.3 Limitations and suggestions to future research
This study has several limitations. First, like other experimental studies, the experiment could not replicate the true dynamics of real service interactions, and to some extent will compromise the external validity of this study. The present research used student participants, some of whom have not worked in service industry before. To
92 capture real service employees’ responses to customer mistreatment, future researchers can apply a similar design in a field experiment with real customers and service employees.
Second, the use of video-based methods reduced the effect of dynamic encounter with the customers. In the real experiment, participants watched the videos about the unpleasant service encounter between service employee and customer. Then participants were required to rate the service employee’s feelings about customer mistreatment. As the difference may always exist between what you believe others would feel and what others truly feel, the video-based methods may not be able to replicate the real service encounter between service employees and customers. Since the rating of service employee’s feelings may depend on participants’ empathy, future researchers may consider examining empathy as a potential moderator.
Third, in this study, we collected self-reported data, which may rise concerns regarding common method variance (CMV) (Podsakoff & Organ, 1986). To reduce the problem of CMV, future researchers can collect data at different points of time. For example, researchers can collect demographic information at time 1, and collect data regarding the dependent variables at time 2. Besides, future researchers could control for social desirability in order to reduce concerns regarding CMV.
Furthermore, since the context of service interaction can be complex, a potentially fruitful avenue for future researchers would be to expand the current theoretical model to include some individual and situational factors that may buffer the negative relationship between different facets of customer mistreatment and service employees’ emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge, such as service employees’ emotional intelligence (Côté, 2014) or store busyness (Pugh, 2001; Rafaeli, 1989;
93 Rafaeli & Sutton, 1990) and organizational rewards for excellent service (Grandey, et al., 2013).
In addition, an affect-based mechanism was found showing service employees’ negative emotions mediate the relationship between different facets of customer mistreatment and service employees’ outcomes. There may be other mechanisms behind the relationship between different facets of customer mistreatment and service employees’ emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge, such as resource-based mechanism (Hobfoll, 2018), and rumination-based mechanism (Nolen-Hoeksema, et al.,
2008).
94
Chapter 4: Conclusion
4.1 Summary
In conclusion, this thesis has presented two studies, Study 1 comprehensively reviewed and synthesized customer service literature, Study 2 explored the effects of different facets of customer mistreatment, which is an under researched area in customer mistreatment. The first study presented in Chapter 2 reviewed and synthesized
18 years of customer service research published in key service outlets since the year
2000. I described the 18 years literature of customer service research as an extensive
“service ecosystem,” which covers various topics related to service employees, customers and service organizations. The review focused on the “moment of truth,” which depicts what happens during the interpersonal service interaction between service employees and customers. Specifically, theoretical perspectives and empirical findings were reviewed and synthesized of three key topics within the service research domain: affect in customer service delivery, customer mistreatment, and employee customer service behaviors. Finally, a research agenda was provided for future research topics and methods and offered practical recommendations for service managers.
For the research area of affect in customer service delivery, two popular subtopics were included: emotional labor and emotional contagion. Key theories and empirical findings of emotional labor were reviewed. Some most used theories were emotional regulation theory (Gross, 1998), resource-based theories (i.e. ego-depletion, conservation of resource theories) (Baumeister et al., 1998; Hobfoll, 1989; Hobfoll et al., 2018), social interaction theory (Côté, 2005) and emotion as social information model (EASI) (Van Kleef, 2009). Besides, I presented some key empirical findings of
95 emotional labor. For example, both surface acting and deep acting can deplete service employee’s mental resources (Goldberg & Grandey, 2007; Liu et al., 2008). Groth et al
(2009) found that deep acting is more favorable emotional regulation strategy, which positively predicted customer satisfaction. Another major topic that bridges the emotional display of customers and service employees is emotional contagion.
Empirical evidence showed that service employee’s positive emotional display positively correlated to customer’s positive affect (Pugh, 2001)
The second research area of customer service research that Study 1 focused on is customer mistreatment. Both of the key theories and empirical findings of customer mistreatment were reviewed. Some most used theories were conservation of resource
(COR) theory (Hobfoll, 1989; Hobfoll et al., 2018), justice theory (Bies & Moag, 1986), and affective event theory (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). Besides, key empirical findings of customer mistreatment were discussed. For example, empirical evidence showed that customer mistreatment triggers service employee’s negative emotions and moods
(Spencer & Rupp, 2009; Yue et al., 2017). Sliter et al. (2010) found that customer mistreatment positively predicts service employee’s emotional exhaustion. Wang et al.
(2011) demonstrated a link between customer mistreatment and service employee’s sabotage against customers.
The third research area discussed in Study 1 is customer service behaviors. It is believed that two are the most important and fruitful subtopics in customer service behaviors: customer orientation and service-orientated citizenship behaviors. Similar to affect in customer service delivery, theories that often applied to explain customer orientation and service-orientated citizenship behaviors are emotional regulation theory
(Gross, 1998), resource-based theories (Baumeister et al., 1998; Hobfoll, 1989; Hobfoll et al., 2018), social interaction theory (Côté, 2005) and emotion as social information
96 model (Van Kleef, 2009). Besides, key empirical findings of customer orientation and service-oriented citizenship behaviors were discussed. For example, many studies found that customer orientation positively predicts perceived service quality and customer satisfaction (Bettencourt & Brown, 1997, Stock & Hoyer, 2005). Hennig-Thurau and
Thurau (2003) found a link between customer orientation and customer trust, customer loyalty, and word of mouth. Chang and Huang (2011) showed that customer orientation positively predicts employee’s sales revenue. Additionally, Podsakoff et al. (2009) found that service-oriented citizenship behaviors related to better employee performance and lower withdrawal behaviors. Some studies suggested that service- oriented citizenship behaviors conceptually linked to proactive performance (Parker et al., 2010) and embedded in organization’s service climate (Morrison, 1997).
The second study presented in Chapter 3 is an experimental study focused the effects of different facets of customer mistreatment on service employee’s well-being and service behaviors. Specifically, two different facets of customer mistreatment were investigated as to whether one lead to different results in service employee’s emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge. Two theoretical perspectives were used to explain the link between customer mistreatment and its consequences on service employee’s negative emotions, emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge: affective event theory and justice theory.
Weiss & Crapanzano (1996) argued that work events play as a proximal cause of employees’ affective activities. Affective event theory suggests that work events elicit affective responses which in return, predict affective-driven attitudes (i.e. work attitude) and behaviors (i.e. work performance), which recognize the importance of emotion in the workplace. AET argues that both positive and negative work event have a substantial psychological impact on employee’s attitudes and behaviors (Weiss &
97 Crapanzano,1996). As a negative affective event, customer mistreatment often induces service employees’ strong negative affective states (Grandey, et al., 2002; Rupp et al.,
2008), which in return negatively influences their work attitude and performance. Also, as a hindrance or hassle, customer mistreatment is likely to threaten service employee’s work and self-image. Furthermore, compared with discrete exposure to customer mistreatment, which is more likely to induce immediate negative affect (i.e. anger)
(Rupp et al., 2008), chronic exposure to customer mistreatment is likely to reduce employee’s well-being (Baranik et al., 2017).
Justice theory offers a theoretical framework for understanding the process between customer mistreatment and its consequences on service employees. Traditional perspectives of justice have conceptualized justice as different types, such as interpersonal justice and informational justice (Bies & Moag, 1986; Greenberg, &
Cropanzano, 1993). Interpersonal justice and informational justice are two different types of justice that have been examined in customer mistreatment research recently.
Interpersonal justice is defined as the extent individuals perceived they are treated with respect and dignity by their interaction partner (Bies & Moag, 1986). Similarly, informational justice refers to explanations and information given to interaction partners and the perception of this information as adequate and truthful (Bies & Moag, 1986).
The video-based methods were applied to make participants experience similar psychological and behavioral response like real service setting (Bateson & Hui, 1992).
Data analysis results using structure equation modelling revealed that service employee’s negative emotions played a mediating role between two facets of customer mistreatment and service employee’s emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge.
Specifically, when the intensity of customer mistreatment is high, participants reported more negative emotions, which makes participants experiencing more emotional
98 exhaustion and desire for revenge. Similarly, when customer mistreatment is employee- targeted, participants reported more negative emotions, which makes participants experiencing more emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge.
4.2 Contributions
The two studies in this thesis both contributed substantially to customer service literature. In Chapter 2, a comprehensive review was implemented which covered 18 years customer service research by critically assessing the “moment of truth,” where service employees, customers and service organizations reciprocally interconnected.
First, the review study reviewed and synthesized previous research in three areas: affect in customer service delivery, customer mistreatment, and employee customer service behaviors. Second, the “service ecosystem” provided a bird’s eye view of multiple research topics involved in customer service research.
In Chapter 3, a more a fine-grained look at customer mistreatment was undertaken by studying the effects of two different facets of customer mistreatment (i.e. intensity of customer mistreatment, target of customer mistreatment) on service employee’s emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge. One thing noticed from the comprehensive review of customer mistreatment was that most of previous studies see customer mistreatment as a fairly broad and global construct (Shao & Skarlicki, 2014;
Wang et al., 2011, 2013), which does not effectively differentiate different types of customer mistreatment. Since we know little about whether the effect of customer mistreatment varies depending on different facets of customer mistreatment, a more fine-grained look at customer mistreatment by studying intensity and target of customer mistreatment extends our understanding about the multidimensional feature of the construct. First, for the intensity of customer mistreatment, the difference was
99 demonstrated between the effect of benign customer mistreatment and the effect of intense customer mistreatment on service employee’s feeling of emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge. Second, for the target of customer mistreatment, empirical evidence was provided showing that the power of linguistic expression (personalized vs. non-personalized) in customer mistreatment episode. Specifically, differentiation was made between organization-targeted customer mistreatment and employee-targeted customer mistreatment, and empirical evidence was found showing that employee- targeted customer mistreatment has stronger impact on service employee’s feeling of emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge than organization-targeted customer mistreatment. Third, an affect-based mechanism was found to explain the relationship between the facets of customer mistreatment and service employees’ emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge. Consistent with AET and justice theory it was revealed that the mediating role of service employee’s negative emotions between intensity and target of customer mistreatment and its consequences on service employee’s feeling of emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge.
4.3 Practical implication
Having outlined the contributions of both Study 1 and Study 2, highlights for some of the practical implications of the thesis are offered. First, Study 1 mentioned that positive emotional display not only benefit customer service experience, but also cost service employee’s resources, which can eventually harm service employee’s well-being
(Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011). Service managers need to carefully balance the costs and benefits of emotional labor requirements.
Second, the review of customer service behaviors revealed that customer orientation and service-oriented citizenship behaviors are two critical elements for
100 successful service delivery. Service managers need to carefully assess and select job candidate based on customer orientation and service-oriented citizenship behaviors.
Service managers can apply effective training and rewarding system to enhance and motivate service employee’s service-oriented citizenship behaviors. Furthermore, service managers need to consider how to effectively match service employee’s behaviors with customer’s needs in different service context. Does scripted behavioral and verbal expectations that follow script service guidelines satisfy customers’ needs in a particular service job? Or is it better for service employees to go beyond the in-role job requirements and show proactive initiative to meet customers’ needs in a specific service context?
Third, since it is hard for service employees to withdraw from the middle of unpleasant interactions, service managers need to train service employees how to effectively deescalate mistreatment episodes. For example, when the customer is really angry about the service failure, rather than confronting with the angry customer, service employees could quickly provide some viable alternatives to meet customer’s request.
Besides, as Study 2 showed that employee-targeted customer mistreatment leads to more serious consequences for service employee’s emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge, it is important that customers understand frontline service employees may not be the person who directly responsible for the service failure. Service organizations need to clearly communicate and manage customers’ service expectations in order to reduce employee-targeted customer mistreatment. Furthermore, as Study 2 revealed that service employee’s negative emotions mediated the relationship between customer mistreatment and its consequences on service employee’s emotional exhaustion and desire for revenge, service managers should apply some effective practices, which can effectively reduce service employee’s negative emotions after customer mistreatment
101 episodes. For example, service managers can train service employees to reappraise customer’s misbehaviors by thinking “the service failure must make the customer panicked” or “the customer needs my help”. Also, service managers can show caring and support to the victim employees. For example, in order to comfort the victim employees, service managers can share their experience of customer mistreatment and show how they deal with the negative emotions after customer mistreatment episodes.
Besides, service employees can even let the victim employees take a break after customer mistreatment episodes.
4.4 Limitations and directions for future research
Although the current literature of customer service has become an “service ecosystem,” which covers various topics related to service employees, service organizations and customers, there are still some limitations that future researchers need to dedicate to address.
First, many previous studies adopted static research design and measurements, which does not allow us to capture the dynamic, reciprocal nature of service interactions. To precisely assess the dynamic and reciprocal nature of service interaction, it is suggested that future studies use experience sampling methods with wearable technology to capture the dynamic, interrelated set of relationships between service employee’s and customer’s emotions, behaviors and attitudes during service interaction.
Second, in the current service literature, empirical studies focusing on multilevel relationships are still rare. In order to assess both between-person and within-person variance, it is urged that more multilevel research studies to assess models of service interactions at and across different levels.
102 Third, as customer service occurs across a huge diversity of different types of contextual factors, services can differ substantially from one case to the next. However, there is very little systemic research into the importance of context in the service research literature. It is suggested that future service researchers need to focus on developing taxonomies and theories, which can help the community members better understand the effects of context on customer service. For example, except for the intensity and target of customer mistreatment, which is examined in Study 2, future researchers can investigate the effects of some contextual factors on customer mistreatment, such as busyness of the store. For example, future researchers could examine the moderating effect of store busyness on the relationship between customer mistreatment and its consequences on service employees. Finally, another interesting factor that may influence the relationship between customer mistreatment and its consequences on service employees is culture difference. Future researchers could examine whether the relationship between customer mistreatment and its consequences on service employees would vary depending on certain culture dimensions, such as individualism and collectivism (Hofstede, 2001).
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123 Appendix A. Video scripts for different experimental conditions
1. Organization-Targeted and low-intensity
Background
Today at Sydney airport, things are as busy as usual, but one man’s luggage is missing. Customer service manager April is dealing with a man whose bags have failed to arrive from Los Angeles (departure city’s name).
The passenger: (worried face, no aggressive body language) Can you help me I lost my bags?
The employee: (sounds worried, sounds like really willing to help, and can feel the worry of that passenger) (here the video shows there is a female service worker, which is the only part showing employee’s face) You lost your bags?
The passenger: (looks worried, and throw up the hands.) Yes, I can’t find it
The employee: (sounds patient and willing to help) What’s your name?
The passenger: (looks worried) My name is Jack Cheng.
The employee: (sounds patient and empathetic) How do you spell your last name?
The passenger: (Looks worried) C-h-e-n-g, Cheng.
The employee: Hi Mr. Cheng, my name is April, do you mind I see your ticket?
The passenger: (worried facial expression.) I don’t mind! Here it is.
The employee: (sounds patient, and polite) OK, flight number AU6699. Right?
The passenger: (sounds worried, and looks like expecting some good news about his bags) YES!... YES!
The employee: (sounds patient, and polite) How many bags do you have?
124
The passenger: (sounds worried) Two bags. One is large, and one is small. All my important stuff is in my bags, and I’ll have to fly to Melbourne this afternoon, I have a very important meeting tomorrow morning.
The employee: (warm and smiling face) Ok, let me check. Please wait a moment.
The employee: (typing keyboard, checking Jack bags in the airline system) (Checking on computer……)
The employee: (worried facial expression, because April got some bad news about Jack’s bags) Hi Mr. Cheng I’m sorry, your bags didn’t come off with your flight, they are still in Los Angeles. We can help you deliver your bags from Los Angeles to Melbourne, we can arrange to deliver your bags by the earliest flight, which will arrive in Melbourne tomorrow afternoon, when your bags are there tomorrow, we’ll contact you, and you can go to Melbourne airport to claim your bags. We’re going to reimburse you for the taxi fees to Melbourne airport.
The passenger: Oh, they’re still in Los Angeles. I have a meeting with my clients tomorrow morning, the meeting is very important. All my meeting notes and important documents are in my bags, without those meeting notes and documents I couldn’t have the meeting with my clients. (Jack is saying his two bags are very important, and hope the airline can deliver his bags before tomorrow morning) Can your airline deliver my bags to Melbourne tomorrow morning? If I can get my bags tomorrow morning, that will be really helpful.
The employee: (sounds worried for the passengers) I’m so sorry Mr. Cheng, the next flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne arrives Melbourne tomorrow afternoon. I really hope that we can get your bags back to you before your meeting tomorrow morning.
The passenger: (speaks slowly, trying to emphasize these two bags are very important) The meeting is very important, can your airline help me double check the flight schedule, maybe there are some flights arriving Melbourne today or tomorrow morning, please help me check it.
The employee: I’m sorry Mr. Cheng, the earliest flight arrives Melbourne is tomorrow afternoon, I understand the meeting is very important to you, unfortunately, there is no flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne today and tomorrow morning, I’m sorry we couldn’t get your bags back to you before your meeting.
125
The passenger: If I can’t get my bags before my meeting, I’ll be in trouble, those meetings notes and documents are very important, I need them to present my business plan to my clients, without those meeting notes and documents, I couldn’t give a good presentation.
The employee: (April expressed the deepest willing to help Jack, also showing her concern that Jack may not get his bags back before his meeting) I’m sorry Mr. Cheng, I really want your bags to be here with you. And I really don’t want to see the delayed bags causing you any trouble. Unfortunately, based on the flight schedule, the next flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne will arrive tomorrow afternoon, before that, there is no flight coming to Melbourne. I’m worried that you may not get your bags until tomorrow afternoon, if you can go to Melbourne airport tomorrow afternoon, you’ll be able to get your bags back. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience we caused to you.
The passenger: (Jack is arguing with April, sounds and looks like impatient, trying to make the company do something more). I’m a long-time customer with your airline, your airline always provides good service with its customers. I believe your airline can help me get my bags before my meeting. This is really urgent, without those meeting notes and documents, I may lose my clients.
The employee: Mr. Cheng, Thank you so much for being a long-time customer with us, you are certainly a valued customer of our company. I truly hope we can get your bags back to you before your meeting. Unfortunately, the best we can do is to deliver your bags to Melbourne tomorrow afternoon. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience we caused to you.
The passenger: (Jack looks at April, he is thinking about other ways to get his bags back) How about your airline delivers my bags to Sydney today? If your airline can do it, I can wait here for my bags and catch the earliest flight to Melbourne tomorrow morning. Please check, see if it’s possible.
The employee: (typing, and checking for few seconds) Ok Mr. Cheng, let me check… just one moment.
The employee: I’m Sorry Mr. Cheng, based on the flight schedule, the earliest flight from Los Angeles to Sydney will arrive tomorrow afternoon. Delivering your bags to Melbourne tomorrow afternoon is the best we can do to get your bags back. I’m sorry that we couldn’t get your bags back before your meeting, I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.
126 The passenger: (Jack speaks to himself, and he regrets) I really shouldn’t leave my meeting notes and documents in my bags. (Jack sigh, Jack is talking to April, Jack looks like giving up) You know, the meeting is very important, and I left my meeting notes and documents in my bags. I don’t know what’s goanna happen in my meeting tomorrow morning.
The employee: Mr. Cheng, I’m sorry, I really understand your feeling. Unfortunately, we Couldn’t get your bags back to you before your meeting. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience we caused to you.
The passenger: (Jack looks like giving up) Alright, I understand your airline has tried your best to help me get my bags back, but it looks like there is no flight coming before my meeting tomorrow morning….(pause for two seconds) I guess I will go with your plan and get my bags back tomorrow afternoon at Melbourne airport.
The employee: (April sounds relief) Mr. Cheng I’m sorry that we can’t get your bags back to you before your meeting tomorrow morning. And Thank you very much for your understanding. We’ll have your bags ready in the Lost Luggage Service counter at Melbourne airport, when you get there, just show them your passport they’ll give you your bags. We’ll reimburse the fees you paid for the taxi. we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.
The passenger: (left the pan on the counter and sounds disappointed, and leaving the counter). Ok, Thanks for your help. I’ll go there and get my bags tomorrow afternoon.
2. Employee-targeted and low-intensity
Background
Today at Sydney airport, things are as busy as usual, but one man’s luggage is missing. Customer service manager April is dealing with a man whose bags have failed to arrive from Los Angeles (departure city’s name).
The passenger: (worried face, no aggressive body language) Can you help me I lost my bags?
The employee: (sounds worried, sounds like really willing to help, and can feel the worry of that passenger) (here the video shows there is a female service worker, which is the only part showing employee’s face) You lost your bags?
127
The passenger: (looks worried, and throw up the hands.) Yes, I can’t find it
The employee: (sounds patient and willing to help) What’s your name?
The passenger: (looks worried) My name is Jack Cheng.
The employee: (sounds patient and empathetic) How do you spell your last name?
The passenger: (Looks worried) C-h-e-n-g, Cheng.
The employee: Hi Mr. Cheng, my name is April, do you mind I see your ticket?
The passenger: (worried facial expression.) I don’t mind! Here it is.
The employee: (sounds patient, and polite) OK, flight number AU6699. Right?
The passenger: (sounds worried, and looks like expecting some good news about his bags) YES!... YES!
The employee: (sounds patient, and polite) How many bags do you have?
The passenger: (sounds worried) Two bags. One is large, and one is small. All my important stuff is in my bags, and I’ll have to fly to Melbourne this afternoon, I have a very important meeting tomorrow morning.
The employee: (warm and smiling face) Ok, let me check. Please wait a moment.
The employee: (typing keyboard, checking Jack bags in the airline system) (Checking on computer……)
The employee: (worried facial expression, because April got some bad news about Jack’s bags) Hi Mr. Cheng I’m sorry, your bags didn’t come off with your flight, they are still in Los Angeles. We can help you deliver your bags from Los Angeles to Melbourne, we can arrange to deliver your bags by the earliest flight, which will arrive in Melbourne tomorrow afternoon,
128 when your bags are there tomorrow, we’ll contact you, and you can go to Melbourne airport to claim your bags. We’re going to reimburse you for the taxi fees to Melbourne airport.
The passenger: Oh, they’re still in Los Angeles. I have a meeting with my clients tomorrow morning, the meeting is very important. All my meeting notes and important documents are in my bags, without those meeting notes and documents I couldn’t have the meeting with my clients. (Jack is saying his two bags are very important, and hope the airline can deliver his bags before tomorrow morning) April, can you deliver my bags to Melbourne tomorrow morning? If I can get my bags before my meeting, that will be really helpful.
The employee: (sounds worried for the passengers) I’m so sorry Mr. Cheng, the next flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne arrives Melbourne tomorrow afternoon. I really hope that we can get your bags back to you before your meeting tomorrow morning.
The passenger: (speaks slowly, trying to emphasize these two bags are very important) The meeting is very important, can you help me double check the flight schedule, maybe there are some flights arriving Melbourne today or tomorrow morning, please help me check it.
The employee: I’m sorry Mr. Cheng, the earliest flight arrives Melbourne is tomorrow afternoon, I understand the meeting is very important to you, unfortunately, there is no flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne today and tomorrow morning, I’m sorry we couldn’t get your bags back to you before your meeting.
The passenger: If I can’t get my bags before my meeting, I’ll be in trouble, those meetings notes and documents are very important, I need them to present my business plan to my clients, without those meeting notes and documents, I couldn’t give a good presentation.
The employee: (April expressed the deepest willing to help Jack, also showing her concern that Jack may not get his bags back before his meeting) I’m sorry Mr. Cheng, I really want your bags to be here with you. And I really don’t want to see the delayed bags causing you any trouble. Unfortunately, based on the flight schedule, the next flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne will arrive tomorrow afternoon, before that, there is no flight coming to Melbourne. I’m worried that you may not get your bags until tomorrow afternoon, if you can go to Melbourne airport tomorrow afternoon, you’ll be able to get your bags back. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience we caused to you.
129
The passenger: (Jack is arguing with April, sounds and looks like impatient, trying to make the company do something more). I’m a long-time customer with your airline, your airline always provides good service with its customers. April, I believe you can help me get my bags back before my meeting (Jack point finger at April). This is really urgent, without those meeting notes and documents, I may lose my clients.
The employee: Mr. Cheng, Thank you so much for being a long-time customer with us, you are certainly a valued customer of our company. I truly hope we can get your bags back to you before your meeting. Unfortunately, the best we can do is to deliver your bags to Melbourne tomorrow afternoon. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience we caused to you.
The passenger: (Jack looks at April, he is thinking about other ways to get his bags back) How about you deliver my bags to Sydney today? (Jack point finger at April) If you can do it, I can wait here for my bags and catch the earliest flight to Melbourne tomorrow morning. April Please check, see if it’s possible.
The employee: (typing, and checking for few seconds) Ok Mr. Cheng, let me check… just one moment.
The employee: I’m Sorry Mr. Cheng, based on the flight schedule, the earliest flight from Los Angeles to Sydney will arrive tomorrow afternoon. Delivering your bags to Melbourne tomorrow afternoon is the best we can do to get your bags back. I’m sorry that we couldn’t get your bags back before your meeting, I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.
The passenger: (Jack speaks to himself, and he regrets) I really shouldn’t leave my meeting notes and documents in my bags. (Jack sigh, Jack is talking to April, Jack looks like giving up) You know, the meeting is very important, and I left my meeting notes and documents in my bags. I don’t know what’s goanna happen in my meeting tomorrow morning.
The employee: Mr. Cheng, I’m sorry, I really understand your feeling. Unfortunately, we Couldn’t get your bags back to you before your meeting. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience we caused to you.
The passenger: (Jack looks like giving up) Alright, I understand you have tried your best to help me get my bags back, but it looks like there is no flight coming before my meeting tomorrow morning….(pause for two seconds) I guess I will go with
130 your plan and get my bags back tomorrow afternoon at Melbourne airport.
The employee: (April sounds relief) Mr. Cheng I’m sorry that we can’t get your bags back to you before your meeting tomorrow morning. And Thank you very much for your understanding. We’ll have your bags ready in the Lost Service counter at Melbourne airport, when you get there, just them your passport they’ll give you your bags. We’ll reimburse the fees you paid for the taxi. we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.
The passenger: (left the pan on the counter and sounds disappointed, and leaving the counter). Ok, Thanks for your help. I’ll go there and get my bags tomorrow afternoon.
3. Organization-Targeted and high-intensity
Background
Today at Sydney airport, things are as busy as usual, but one man’s luggage is missing. Customer service manager April is dealing with a man whose bags have failed to arrive from Los Angeles (departure city’s name).
The passenger: (worried face, no aggressive body language) Can you help me I lost my bags?
The employee: (sounds worried, sounds like really willing to help, and can feel the worry of that passenger) (here the video shows there is a female service worker, which is the only part showing employee’s face) You lost your bags?
The passenger: (looks worried, and throw up the hands.) Yes, I can’t find it
The employee: (sounds patient and willing to help) What’s your name?
The passenger: (looks worried) My name is Jack Cheng.
The employee: (sounds patient and empathetic) How do you spell your last name?
The passenger: (Looks worried) C-h-e-n-g, Cheng.
The employee: Hi Mr. Cheng, my name is April, do you mind I see your ticket?
131 The passenger: (worried facial expression.) I don’t mind! Here it is.
The employee: (sounds patient, and polite) OK, flight number AU6699. Right?
The passenger: (sounds worried, and looks like expecting some good news about his bags) YES!... YES!
The employee: (sounds patient, and polite) How many bags do you have?
The passenger: (sounds worried) Two bags. One is large, and one is small. All my important stuff is in my bags, and I’ll have to fly to Melbourne this afternoon, I have a very important meeting tomorrow morning.
The employee: (warm and smiling face) Ok, let me check. Please wait a moment.
The employee: (typing keyboard, checking Jack bags in the airline system) (Checking on computer……)
The employee: (worried facial expression, because April got some bad news about Jack’s bags) Hi Mr. Cheng I’m sorry, your bags didn’t come off with your flight, they are still in Los Angeles. We can help you deliver your bags from Los Angeles to Melbourne, we can arrange to deliver your bags by the earliest flight, which will arrive in Melbourne tomorrow afternoon, when your bags are there tomorrow, we’ll contact you, and you can go to Melbourne airport to claim your bags. We’re going to reimburse you for the taxi fees to Melbourne airport.
The passenger: (when April is saying Jack’s bags are still in Los Angeles, Jack is shaking his head. And the facial expression becomes more impatient, Jack thought what April said is unreasonable. Jack becomes very not patient, and a bit angry). No I can’t accept this plan, my meeting is tomorrow morning, all my meeting notes and important documents are in my bags. If I get my bags back tomorrow afternoon, how am I supposed to have the meeting with my clients!!! (sounds angry, and has some body language showing disappointment to the employee i.e. shrug shoulders). Listen, I need my bags back before my meeting tomorrow morning! Your airline lost my bags, your airline should be responsible for getting my bags back to me! (Jack speaks in a bit rush tone, and becomes very impatient, speaks rudely, with impatient body language, i.e. rolling Eyes, Shrugged shoulders).
132 The meeting is very important to me, and your airline don’t want to make me lose my clients because of this ridiculous mistake your airline made. My bags aren’t here because of your airline’s thoughtless work, your airline has to find a way to get my bags back to me before my meeting tomorrow morning. I won’t go to Melbourne airport tomorrow afternoon for my bags, I need my bags now or at least before my meeting tomorrow!!
The employee: (sounds worried for the passengers) I’m so sorry Mr. Cheng, I completely understand your feelings. Unfortunately, the next flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne can only arrive Melbourne tomorrow afternoon. I really hope that we didn’t cause you too much Inconvenience, and I really hope that we can get your bags back to you before your meeting tomorrow morning. We really hope……..
The passenger: (Jack does not let the April finish, stops April. Jack speaks slowly, trying to emphasize that these two bags are very important. Speaks with very impatient tone with some rude words, while Jack is speaking, he is trying to move closer to April) I have a very important meeting with my clients tomorrow morning in Melbourne, all the documents and meeting notes are in my bags. (speak with really rush tone, and some aggressive body language and keep changing body language, i.e. rolling eyes, cross arms and throw hands up) If your airline delivers my bags to Melbourne tomorrow afternoon, I can’t have the meeting with my client!!! I don’t care what your airline has to do to get my bags back, I’m the customer, and the customer is always right. your airline caused me this trouble, so it’s your airline’s problem, and your airline has to find a way to get my bags back to me.
The employee: (April expressed the deepest willing to help Jack, also showing her concern that Jack may not get his bags back before his meeting) I’m sorry Mr. Cheng, I really want your bags to be here with you. And I really don’t want to see the delayed bags causing you any trouble. Unfortunately, based on the flight schedule, the next flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne will arrive tomorrow afternoon, before that, there is no other flight coming to Melbourne. I’m worried you may not get your bags back until tomorrow afternoon, if you can go to Melbourne airport tomorrow afternoon, you’ll be able to get your bags back. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience we caused to you.
The passenger: (still sounds very impatient and aggressive) No! I don’t accept the useless apology. Your airline lost my bags and your airline is not helping me!!!
The employee: (try to make the passenger calm down, and sounds like really want to help)
133 Mr. Cheng, I can totally understand your feelings. Unfortunately…
The passenger: (Jack does not let April finish, Jack sounds and looks like impatient and aggressive, very impolite) your airline is unfortunate!!! I paid $800 for my flight, not for losing my bags and my important meeting notes. Why did other people’s bags all come off the flight, but my bags are still in Los Angeles. (sounds rush angry and disappointed) Did your airline do this on purpose? (Jack is blaming the company, and have lots of aggressive body language, i.e. throw his hands up, rolling eyes, shrug shoulders, hands on hips) This is ridiculous and unacceptable, your airline is not even able to provide basic service to its customers. I’m really disappointed in your airline, I’m really disappointed!!!
The employee: Mr. Cheng, we’re always trying our best to provide great service to our customers, and you’re one of them. we’ll do anything we can do to provide you with great service. Unfortunately, based on the flight schedule, the best we can do for you is to deliver your bags from Los Angeles to Melbourne tomorrow afternoon, when your bags are delivered to Melbourne airport, we’ll contact you from Melbourne airport and you can go there to claim your bags. We can reimburse the fee you spend on taxi to go to Melbourne airport. I do hope that we can get your bags back to you before your meeting tomorrow. However…
The passenger: (stops April, sounds rush and angry and screaming) This is not acceptable, I’m so disappointed in your airline, I paid $800 to your company, and this is the service I get?! I’m so disappointed in your airline, your airline has to get my bags back to me….. (pause a few seconds).
The employee: (April speaks when the Jack is pausing) Mr. Cheng, We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience we caused you, We’re trying our best to get your bags back to you. But, based on the flight schedule, delivering your bags to Melbourne tomorrow afternoon is really the best we can do.
The passenger: (rolling eyes and sigh, seems like giving up, but threaten to destroy the company’s reputation.) All right, I’ll go with your useless plan, but listen I’m definitely going to tell everyone I know not fly with your airline! I’ll also spread this message on social media! I’ll let everyone know how bad your airline’s service is, and I’ll never choose your airline again.
The employee: (April sounds worried) Mr. Cheng, I’m so sorry that the delayed bags caused you this inconvenience. This is really the best we can do for you. We will have
134 your bags ready in the Lost Luggage Service counter at Melbourne airport, when you get there, just show them your passport they’ll give you your bags. we’ll reimburse the fees you paid for the taxi. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.
The passenger: (leaves the pan on the counter, sounds disappointed, and leaves the counter). This is ridiculous!!! What an irresponsible airline!!!
4. Employee-targeted and high-intensity
Background
Today at Sydney airport, things are as busy as usual, but one man’s luggage is missing. Customer service manager April is dealing with a man whose bags have failed to arrive from Los Angeles (departure city’s name).
The passenger: (worried face, no aggressive body language) Can you help me I lost my bags?
The employee: (sounds worried, sounds like really willing to help, and can feel the worry of that passenger) (here the video shows there is a female service worker, which is the only part showing employee’s face) You lost your bags?
The passenger: (looks worried, and throw up the hands.) Yes, I can’t find it
The employee: (sounds patient and willing to help) What’s your name?
The passenger: (looks worried) My name is Jack Cheng.
The employee: (sounds patient and empathetic) How do you spell your last name?
The passenger: (Looks worried) C-h-e-n-g, Cheng.
The employee: Hi Mr. Cheng, my name is April, do you mind I see your ticket?
The passenger: (worried facial expression.) I don’t mind! Here it is.
The employee: (sounds patient, and polite) OK, flight number AU6699. Right?
135
The passenger: (sounds worried, and looks like expecting some good news about his bags) YES!... YES!
The employee: (sounds patient, and polite) How many bags do you have?
The passenger: (sounds worried) Two bags. One is large, and one is small. All my important stuff is in my bags, and I’ll have to fly to Melbourne this afternoon, I have a very important meeting tomorrow morning.
The employee: (warm and smiling face) Ok, let me check. Please wait a moment.
The employee: (typing keyboard, checking Jack bags in the airline system) (Checking on computer……)
The employee: (worried facial expression, because April got some bad news about Jack’s bags) Hi Mr. Cheng I’m sorry, your bags didn’t come off with your flight, they are still in Los Angeles. We can help you deliver your bags from Los Angeles to Melbourne, we can arrange to deliver your bags by the earliest flight, which will arrive in Melbourne tomorrow afternoon, when your bags are there tomorrow, we’ll contact you, and you can go to Melbourne airport to claim your bags. We’re going to reimburse you for the taxi fees to Melbourne airport.
The passenger: (when April is saying Jack’s bags are still in Los Angeles, Jack is shaking his head. And the facial expression becomes more impatient, Jack thought what April said is unreasonable. Jack becomes very not patient, and a bit angry). No I can’t accept this plan, my meeting is tomorrow morning, all my meeting notes and important documents are in my bags. If I get my bags back tomorrow afternoon, how am I supposed to have a meeting with my clients!!! (sounds angry, and has some body language showing disappointment to the employee i.e. shrug shoulders). Listen, I need my bags back before my meeting tomorrow morning! You lost my bags ( Jack points finger at April), you should be responsible for getting my bags to me! (Jack speaks in a bit rush tone, and becomes very impatient, speaks rudely, with impatient body language, i.e. rolling Eyes, Shrugged shoulders). The meeting is very important to me, and you don’t want to make me lose my clients because of this ridiculous mistake you made ( Jack points finger at April) My bags aren’t here because of your thoughtless work ( Jack points finger at April), you have to find a
136 way to get my bags back to me before my meeting tomorrow morning. I won’t go to Melbourne airport tomorrow afternoon for my bags, I need my bags now or at least before my meeting tomorrow!!!
The employee: (sounds worried for the passengers) I am so sorry Mr. Cheng, I completely understand your feelings. Unfortunately, the next flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne arrives Melbourne tomorrow afternoon. I really hope that we didn’t cause you too much Inconvenience, and I really hope that we can get your bags back to you before your meeting tomorrow morning. We really hope that……..
The passenger: (Jack does not let the April finish, stops April. Jack speaks slowly, trying to emphasize that these two bags are very important. Speaks with very impatient tone with some rude words, while Jack is speaking, he is trying to move closer to April) I have a very important meeting with my clients tomorrow morning in Melbourne, all the documents and meeting notes are in my bags. (speak with really rush tone, and some aggressive body language and keep changing body language, i.e. rolling eyes, cross arms and throw hands up) If you deliver my bags to Melbourne tomorrow afternoon, I can’t have the meeting with my client!!! ( Jack points finger at April) I don’t care what you have to do to get my bags back, I’m the customer, the customer is always right. you caused me such trouble, which is your problem, you find a way to get my bags back to me ( Jack points finger at April).
The employee: (April expressed the deepest willing to help Jack, also showing her concern that Jack may not get his bags back before his meeting) I’m sorry Mr. Cheng, I really want your bags to be here with you. And I really don’t want to see the delayed bags causing you any trouble. Unfortunately, based on the flight schedule, the next flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne will arrive tomorrow afternoon, before that, there is no other flight coming to Melbourne. I’m worried you may not get your bags back until tomorrow afternoon, if you can go to Melbourne airport tomorrow afternoon, you’ll be able to get your bags back. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience we caused to you.
The passenger: (still sounds very impatient and aggressive) No! I don’t accept your useless apology. You lost my bags and you are not helping me!!!
The employee: (try to make the passenger calm down, and sounds like really want to help) Mr. Cheng, I can totally understand your feelings. Unfortunately…
The passenger: (Jack does not let April finish, sounds and looks like impatient and aggressive, very impolite)
137 You are unfortunate!!! I paid $800 for my flight, not for losing my bags and my important meeting notes. Why did other people’s bags all come off the flight, but my bags are still in Los Angeles? (sounds rush angry and disappointed) Did you do this on purpose? (Jack is blaming the company, and have lots of aggressive body language, i.e. throw his hands up, rolling eyes, shrug shoulders, hands on hips) This is ridiculous and unacceptable, you are not even able to provide basic service to your customers (Jack points finger at April). I’m really disappointed in you, I’m really disappointed!!!
The employee: Mr. Cheng, we’re always trying our best to provide great service to our customers, and you’re one of them, and we’ll do anything we can do to provide you with great service. Unfortunately, based on the flight schedule, the best we can do for you is to deliver your bags from Los Angeles to Melbourne tomorrow afternoon. When your bags are delivered to Melbourne airport, we’ll contact you from Melbourne airport and you can go there to claim your bags. We can reimburse the fee you spend on taxi to go to Melbourne airport. I do hope that we can get your bags back to you before your meeting tomorrow. However…
The passenger: (stops April, sounds rush and angry and screaming) This is not acceptable, I’m so disappointed in you, I paid $800 to you, and this is the service I get?! you have to get my bags back before my meeting.….. (pause a few seconds).
The employee: (April speaks when the Jack is pausing) Mr. Cheng, We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience we caused to you, We’re trying our best to get your bags back to you. But, based on the flight schedule, delivering your bags to Melbourne tomorrow afternoon is really the best we can do.
The passenger: (rolling eyes and sigh, seems like giving up, but threaten to destroy the company’s reputation.) All right, I’ll go with your useless plan, but listen, I’m definitely going to talk to your supervisor, I will let your supervisor know what great customer service I got from you, and I’ll also spread this message on social media! I’ll let everyone know what a bad service I got from you.
The employee: (April sounds worried) Mr. Cheng, I’m so sorry that the delayed bags caused you this inconvenience. This is really the best we can do for you. We’ll have your bags ready in the Lost Luggage Service counter at Melbourne airport. When you get there, just show them your passport they’ll give you your bags We’ll reimburse the fees you paid for the taxi. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.
138
The passenger: (leaves the pan on the counter, sounds disappointed, and leaves the counter). this is ridiculous!!! What an irresponsible employee!!!
139 Appendix B. Study 2 Survey
Control variables
1. Are you male or female?
A. Male
B. Female
2. How long have you worked in the service industry? (Years)
______
3. Indicating to what extent you generally feel this way, that is, how you feel on
average (Negative affectivity).
• Hostile (Likert scale from 1 very slightly to 5 extremely)
• Irritable (Likert scale from 1 very slightly to 5 extremely)
• Ashamed (Likert scale from 1 very slightly to 5 extremely)
• Guilty (Likert scale from 1 very slightly to 5 extremely)
• Distressed (Likert scale from 1 very slightly to 5 extremely)
• Upset (Likert scale from 1 very slightly to 5 extremely)
• Scared (Likert scale from 1 very slightly to 5 extremely)
• Afraid (Likert scale from 1 very slightly to 5 extremely)
• Jittery (Likert scale from 1 very slightly to 5 extremely)
• Nervous (Likert scale from 1 very slightly to 5 extremely)
Mediator
4. Based on the video you just watched, after the conversation the airline employee
had with the passenger, to what extent do you think the airline employee will
have the following thoughts towards passengers (Negative emotions)
• Anger (Likert scale from 1 not at all to 5 extremely)
• Irritation (Likert scale from 1 not at all to 5 extremely)
140 Dependent variable
5. How do you think the airline employee will feel after her conversation with the
passenger? (Emotional exhaustion)
• The airline employee will feel emotionally drained from her work
(Likert scale from 1 not frequently at all to 5 very frequent)
• The airline employee will feel used up at the end of the workday
(Likert scale from 1 not frequently at all to 5 very frequent)
The airline employee will feel dread getting up in the morning and
having to face another day on the job (Likert scale from 1 not frequently
at all to 5 very frequent)
• The airline employee will feel burned out from her work
(Likert scale from 1 not frequently at all to 5 very frequent)
• The airline employee will feel frustrated by her job
(Likert scale from 1 not frequently at all to 5 very frequent)
6. To what extent do you think the airline employee will have the following
thoughts towards passengers? (Desire for revenge)
• I’ll make them pay
(Likert scale from 1 not at all true to 5 very much)
• I wished that something bad would happen to them
(Likert scale from 1 not at all true to 5 very much)
• They’re bad
(Likert scale from 1 not at all true to 5 very much)
• I want to see them get what they deserve
(Likert scale from 1 not at all true to 5 very much)
• I want to see them hurt and miserable
141 (Likert scale from 1 not at all true to 5 very much)
142 Appendix C. A list of assumptions of structural models (Kline, 2012, p. 113)
1. “The presumed cause (e.g., X) must occur before the presumed effect (e.g., Y);
that is, there is temporal precedence.”
2. “There is association, or an observed covariation, between X and Y.”
3. “There is isolation, which means that there are no other plausible explanations
(e.g., extraneous or confounding variables) of the covariation between X and Y;
that is, their statistical association holds controlling for other variables that may
also effect Y.”
4. “The form of the distribution of the data is known; that is, the observed
distributions match those assumed by the method used to estimate associations.”
5. “The direction of the causal relation is correctly specified; that is, X indeed
causes Y instead of the reverse, or X and Y cause each other in a reciprocal
manner.”
143