Executive summary of “Problematic customers and customer service employee retaliation”

Citation

(2014), "Executive summary of “Problematic customers and customer service employee retaliation”", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 28 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSM-03-2014-0110

Executive summary of “Problematic customers and customer service employee retaliation”

Article Type: Executive summary and implications for managers and executives From: Journal of Services Marketing, Volume 28, Issue 3

This summary has been provided to allow managers and executives a rapid appreciation of the content of the article. Those with a particular interest in the topic covered may then read the article in toto to take advantage of the more comprehensive description of the research undertaken and its results to get the full benefit of the material present.

You see signs on trains and buses warning passengers not to abuse the staff. How sad that some people need to be told that, but such is the state of our societies these days that informing people not to insult, swear at or even attack employees is deemed necessary. Similar signs can be seen in hospitals, clinics and some stores. While there is no excuse for the appalling – and probably criminal – behavior that is being warned about, there might be reasons which go some way toward explaining it. Understanding them can be useful in removing those reasons.

That’s not possible in every case. Some people are abusive and unreasonable by nature – and they act even more inexcusably if they get drunk. On the other hand, some customers might be blessed with a sweet nature but get so stressed at the treatment they are getting – or feeling they are getting – at the hands of a service provider that they just “snap” and do a fair impression of Dr Jekyll turning into Mr Hyde. Understanding the emotional turmoil employees suffer because of customers’ inappropriate behavior is also imperative for employers. Face-to-face unpleasantness by a customer to a customer service employee (CSE) is bad enough, but, just like cowardly and repulsive comments posted anonymously on social media sites, not being “face-to-face” can embolden the angry and unhappy customer. In fact, about 20 per cent of all customer interactions in call centers are hostile.

Consumers’ expectations about services have changed over the years. Now we expect 24/7 service through email, chat and voice. Companies have ramped up their services to meet these growing expectations, and some have created global service delivery models by outsourcing the service component of the product to dedicated call centers in developing countries. These centers allow firms to offer high-quality services at low costs, mainly through the use of telecommunication technology. However, this change from face-to-face service to a telecommunication-based service delivery combined with extremely high expectations has led to problems – one of them being “customer rage” toward employees which is becoming increasingly prevalent in marketing environments, especially in service settings.

The call center industry has become an epicenter for customer interactions with organizations, and ensuring effective, satisfactory delivery of service is extremely important for developing long-term customer relationships. Retaliation by CSEs might hamper such efforts. Some employees admit, when confronted with unreasonable behavior from a customer, to deliberately transferring them to a wrong department, leaving them “on hold” for an unnecessarily long period or deliberately terminating the call. Behavior not exactly designed to improve the demeanor of the customer!

Many problematic behaviors of customers can be context-specific and therefore should differ for different interaction contexts. There’s no shortage of labels to categorize them – including “deviant customer behavior”, “aberrant consumer behavior”, “problem customers”, “inappropriate customers”, “consumer misbehavior”, “cynical consumers” and “jay customers”. But a service encounter is a dyadic process and the outcome depends on both customers and service employees, with the activities and behaviors of one affecting the other. This phenomenon is explored by Dr Ramana Kumar Madupalli and Dr Amit Poddar in “Problematic customers and customer service employee retaliation”. They specifically test possible retaliation against problematic customer behaviors – a category in which they include “abusive behavior” and “unreasonably demanding behavior”.

Abusive behavior is when the customer uses abusive language, accuses employees of wrongdoing and blames them personally for company policy. Unreasonably demanding behavior is where the customer demands to talk to a supervisor for no reason, asks for special discounts multiple times and asks the employee to act in defiance of company policies. Such behaviors can affect an employee’s well-being and subsequently their response. The study suggests that emotional dissonance (when an employee has to hide their true feelings) and emotional exhaustion (stress, reduced energy, physical and emotional depletion caused by extreme emotional demands on employees in boundary-spanner roles) can lead CSEs to retaliate against problematic customers.

Most call center operations are outsourced. Customer dissatisfaction due to CSE retaliation, therefore, could affect client companies’ business, which can further have a ripple effect and negatively influence the call center vendors’ business. Call center managers must invest sufficient resources in training CSEs to counter negative customer behaviors. The skills required by call center-based CSEs can mostly be acquired by training, so CSEs can be coached to counter problematic interactions with customers. Call centers also need structured guidelines for countering problematic customer behaviors, to reduce both emotional dissonance and emotional exhaustion and thus retaliation. For client organizations, it is important to select the right vendor. Beyond the economics of the operations, client companies must consider the guidelines call center management uses to deal with problematic customers and retaliatory CSEs. Clients might even provide such guidelines to make the whole process more efficient and effective.

To read the full article enter 10.1108/JSM-02-2013-0040 into your search engine.

(A précis of the article “Problematic customers and customer service employee retaliation”. Supplied by Marketing Consultants for Emerald.)