Faculty of Management.
Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia.
J Appl Psychol. 2017 Feb;102(2):163-179. doi: 10.1037/apl0000170. Epub 2016 Nov 28.
Customer service employees tend to react negatively to customer incivility by demonstrating incivility in return, thereby likely reducing customer service quality. Research, however, has yet to uncover precisely what customers do that results in employee incivility. Through transcript and computerized text analysis in a multilevel, multisource, mixed-method field study of customer service events (N = 434 events), we found that employee incivility can occur as a function of customer (a) aggressive words, (b) second-person pronoun use (e.g., you, your), (c) interruptions, and (d) positive emotion words. First, the positive association between customer aggressive words and employee incivility was more pronounced when the verbal aggression included second-person pronouns, which we label targeted aggression. Second, we observed a 2-way interaction between targeted aggression and customer interruptions such that employees demonstrated more incivility when targeted customer verbal aggression was accompanied by more (vs. fewer) interruptions. Third, this 2-way interaction predicting employee incivility was attenuated when customers used positive emotion words. Our results support a resource-based explanation, suggesting that customer verbal aggression consumes employee resources potentially leading to self-regulation failure, whereas positive emotion words from customers can help replenish employee resources that support self-regulation. The present study highlights the advantages of examining what occurs within customer-employee interactions to gain insight into employee reactions to customer incivility. (PsycINFO Database Record
客服人员在面对顾客无礼时，往往会以无礼回应，从而降低顾客服务质量。然而，目前的研究尚未揭示顾客的哪些行为会导致员工无礼。通过对客户服务事件（N=434 事件）进行多层次、多来源、混合方法的实地研究中的转录和计算机文本分析，我们发现员工的无礼行为可能是顾客（a）攻击性言语、（b）第二人称代词使用（如你、你的）、（c）打断和（d）积极情绪词的结果。首先，当言语攻击包含第二人称代词时，即我们称之为针对性攻击，顾客攻击性言语与员工无礼行为之间的正相关关系更为明显。其次，我们观察到针对性攻击和顾客打断之间存在双向交互作用，即当顾客的言语攻击带有更多（而非更少）打断时，员工表现出更多的无礼行为。第三，当顾客使用积极情绪词时，这种双向交互作用预测员工无礼行为的程度会减弱。我们的研究结果支持了基于资源的解释，即顾客的言语攻击消耗了员工的资源，可能导致自我调节失败，而顾客的积极情绪词可以帮助员工补充支持自我调节的资源。本研究强调了研究顾客-员工互动中发生的事情以深入了解员工对顾客无礼行为的反应的优势。
