The customer is <i>not</i> always right: customer aggression and emotion regulation of service employees

TLDR

Research on workplace aggression has focused on supervisors and co‑workers, but aggressive customers also pose unique risks to employees. The study examines how customer aggression affects call‑center employees. Data were collected from 198 employees at two call‑center sites. Employees reported encountering customer verbal aggression about ten times daily, with higher frequency linked to race and negative affectivity; aggression’s frequency and perceived stress predicted emotional exhaustion, which mediated the link between stress appraisal and absenteeism, while threat perception influenced emotion‑regulation strategies—surface acting or venting for high threat, deep acting for low threat—and job autonomy moderated perceived stress. © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract

Abstract Research on work aggression or anger has typically focused on supervisors and co‐workers as the instigators of aggression; however, aggressive customers are also likely and may have unique consequences for the employee. We explore this phenomenon with a sample of 198 call center employees at two work sites. The employees reported that customer verbal aggression occurred 10 times a day, on average, though this varied by race and negative affectivity. Using LISREL, our data indicated that both the frequency and stress appraisal of customer aggression positively related to emotional exhaustion, and this burnout dimension mediated the relationship of stress appraisal with absences. Stress appraisal also influenced employees' emotion regulation strategies with their most recent hostile caller. Employees who felt more threatened by customer aggression used surface acting or vented emotions, while those who were less threatened used deep acting. Job autonomy helped explain who found these events more stressful, and implications of these results are discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.