From Bad to Worse: Negative Exchange Spirals in EmployeeCustomer Service Interactions

Markus Groth et al.

Audio by Paper2Audio.

Abstract

Poor employee–customer interactions influence customer satisfaction and employee well-being. In studying these negative exchanges, researchers tend to take either the perspective of the customer (i.e., the problem is service failure) or the employee (i.e., the problem is the difficult customer). We review these two literatures to show that the inputs, processes, and outcomes of these two perspectives are linked in a way that creates a negative exchange spiral. We argue that this is an “open-loop” spiral because the negative service encounter spills over to the experience of subsequent customers and nearby employees. We suggest that future research use an integrated model of the employee–customer negative exchange spiral and dyadic methods to more effectively test and understand these negative exchanges. Finally, we propose how dyadic and contextual characteristics accelerate or break the negative spiral, suggesting research and practical implications.

Keywords

customer service, deviant/counterproductive behavior, emotions & moods, justice/fairness

The quality of interpersonal interactions customers is a critical component of any cus-between frontline service employees and tomer service experience. With the rapid growth of the service economy and an increasing emphasis on providing service excellence, a growing number of employees in today's workplaces regularly spend time interacting with customers on a daily basis, even in some traditionally “non-service jobs”. Thus, there has been growing interest in the dynamics of service exchanges among psychology, management, and marketing scholars seeking to improve the service experience for both customers and employees.

Being at the frontline means that service employees are often the “face of the organization” in the mind of customers. Thus, they are typically required to endure the complaints and frustrations of customers, in addition to other stressors often associated with service jobs, such as low pay, long and inconvenient working hours, low social status, and abusive supervision, to name just a few. The quality of the employee–customer interaction is therefore of vital importance to both customers and employees, as it provides customers with important clues about a company's service quality standards while also influencing employees' satisfaction with work. Unfortunately, this means that when interactions go bad, they have critical consequences.

Although many service exchanges are fairly routine and result in satisfying outcomes for both exchange partners, exchanges between employees and customers can turn negative during the course of the interaction. Such exchanges play a critical role in driving the service performance and well-being of employees as well as the purchasing decisions and overall satisfaction of customers. Even though much research has attempted to identify the causes and outcomes of negative service exchanges, the literature is somewhat fragmented, with researchers tending to focus on one of two perspectives. On the one hand, research in psychology and organizational behavior has focused on mistreatment by customers as a source of anger, strain, and retaliatory behaviors of employees. On the other hand, research in service marketing has typically focused on frontline employees' service delivery failures as a starting point in examining such outcomes as customer dissatisfaction, disappointment, or even rage, and complaint behavior.

Although there is conceptual and empirical support for both perspectives, they tend to view the same employee–customer interaction quite differently, often with different labels for the same behaviors. That is, each body of literature has focused on one side of the service exchange while paying little attention to the other side. As a result, we know little about how these two perspectives interrelate and inform each other.

For example, employees may see customers as difficult or rude (e.g., customer mistreatment), while customers see themselves as communicating their rights and wants (e.g., complaint behavior). Likewise, a customer may see an employee as incompetent or rude (e.g., service failure), while the employee views himself or herself as following organizational expectations or expressing an experienced injustice (e.g., faking emotions, service sabotage). Theory has repeatedly pointed toward the importance of the impact that exchange partners have on each other in dyadic exchanges, both on an affective and a cognitive level; the actions of one exchange partner may often determine the actions of the other exchange partner.

It is therefore surprising that little empirical research has sought to explain the reciprocal dynamics of negative exchanges between employees and customers.

The purpose of this article is to provide a better understanding of negative exchanges in employee–customer service interactions, in the hope that service organizations will be better equipped to reduce them. In seeking to achieve this purpose, we make two contributions in this article. First, we review and merge two streams. of research — the customer-focused and the employee-focused approach — in order to develop a dual-perspective model of the social dynamics during negative service exchanges. We argue that such negative employee-customer interactions can be best understood as dyadic and dynamic spirals, where the outcome of one negative exchange is the input for another, and things can quickly go from bad to worse for both parties unless measures are taken to intervene. Furthermore, the negative exchange is an open-loop spiral. Due to the public nature of service interactions, employees and customers may observe a negative exchange, which can generate additional spirals in other interactions. Thus, our first goal is to provide an integrated model that will help in understanding the complex nature of negative exchange spirals.

Our second contribution is to present future research directions and propositions based on this integrated model. We first discuss how this new model results in attention to dyadic or contextual characteristics as factors that may accelerate or break the negative exchange spiral, rather than individual characteristics of the employee or customer. We also argue that this dual-perspective approach requires a methodological approach that captures the dyadic nature of service interactions. Studies that ask both exchange partners about their experiences are rare, and studies that ask both exchange partners about their experiences of the same service interaction are even rarer. Yet we know that perspective-taking can help reduce negative responses to difficult or stressful interpersonal situations (Rupp, McCance, Spencer, & Sonntag, 2008). Thus, understanding both exchange partners' perspectives will go a long way toward demystifying these exchanges and mitigating their consequences for service providers.

In making these two contributions, our overarching goal is to suggest a new way of understanding negative exchanges in service interactions. We believe that integrating these two bodies of literature into a comprehensive, dyadic model that presents negative exchanges as an open-loop spiral, offers unique tools for both understanding and intervening in these exchanges.

Corresponding author:

Alicia Grandey, Pennsylvania State University, Psychology Department, III Moore Building, University Park, PA 16803, USA. Email: aag6@psu.edu

The unique nature of employee-customer negative exchange spirals

Organizational scholars have been interested in negative exchange spirals within the workplace in a number of different contexts. Consistent with Lindsley, Brass, and Thomas (1995), we define a spiral as a pattern of consecutive increases (or decreases) in behavioral and affective negative reactions. For example, Andersson and Pearson (1999) proposed a"spiraling effect of incivility" in the workplace which posits that initially low-intensity mistreatment by coworkers, such as rudeness, thoughtless acts, or negative gestures, can quickly escalate into more intense, aggressive behaviors.

Their model views incivility as a social interactionist process, in that incivility behaviors that are exchanged between organizational members emerge into a dynamic spiraling exchange of increasingly negative behaviors. Similarly, Olson-Buchanan and Boswell (2008) developed a dynamic model of perceived mistreatment and subsequent responses to such mistreatment, suggesting that negative responses by one party often lead to downward spirals similar to those described by Andersson and Pearson. Other examples of negative exchange spirals examined in prior research include spirals of distrust among consumers and emotion cycles within organizations. Common to most existing models of negative exchange spirals is the underlying assumption that the parties involved lack adequate understanding of their situation or are unwilling or unable to alter their behavior.

The focus of this article is to propose a conceptual model of negative exchange spirals in employee–customer interactions. What is different about these interactions, such that they warrant a unique model? First, negative workplace interactions are not a daily occurrence for most people, but they ensue with more frequency when interacting with organizational outsiders, such as customers, rather than with insiders. Second, frontline employees present the “face of the organization” to customers, and interpersonal treatment often is the performance of the service in the eye of the customer. Thus, what is perceived as poor treatment is also perceived as poor performance. As a result, a single negative interaction with a customer can have important consequences not just for that relationship but, due to vicarious effects, for the organization as a whole, such as loss of return business and negative word of mouth by other customers.

Third, because the customer is external to the organization, the negative exchange may spill over to employees outside the context of the exchange (e.g., an enraged customer who makes a scene in front of otherwise happy customers). Thus, the negative exchange is not a “closed loop” between two exchange parties as it is considered in most prior models because it has high potential to spill over to third parties (i.e., subsequent customers and other employees). Although we primarily focus on how the spiral unfolds within a single interaction, our model accounts for the potential of spillover to secondary spirals involving other parties.

Finally, in contrast to many coworker interactions, there are usually unequal goal expectations and power differentials in employee-customer interactions, both in low-end, routine services and in high-end, personalized services, with boundary-spanning employees being constrained by organizational expectations and role demands that customers are not bound by and are often not even aware of (Bettencourt, Brown, & MacKenzie, 2005). This makes it harder for either party to meet expectations and is the main reason why both employees and customers may view the same exchange quite differently. Moreover, unlike most exchanges with colleagues and other organizational insiders, employees and customers are often strangers to each other with no prior exchange history and no likely future interactions, providing less incentive for both parties to avoid conflict.

Integrating the employee-customer negative exchange literatures

As shown above, employee–customer interactions are unique among the types of exchanges usually examined in research on negative exchange spirals. Thus, we aim to develop a new conceptual model that provides an important addition to the literature. To do this, we first review the mechanisms and evidence from the customer-based and employee-based perspectives and then show how they fit into our integrated model, shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 summary: A diagram illustrating a circular conceptual framework of a negative exchange spiral between customers and employees. The top half shows the customer perspective, where perceived service delivery failure leads to negative reactions and antisocial behaviors. The bottom half shows the employee perspective, where perceived mistreatment leads to negative reactions and antisocial behaviors. These two cycles feed into one another, creating a continuous loop of mutual negativity that can also affect other customers and employees through vicarious experience. The point is to model how negative interactions trigger a self-reinforcing cycle of antisocial behavior between employees and customers.

It is important to note that there is no definitive starting or end point; it is possible for a negative exchange to begin and end at any point shown in our model. In other words, the spiral could begin due to factors outside the spiral, such as a customer entering the service exchange in a bad mood, an employee being new and making mistakes, or the remnants of a previous negative interaction. Once a negative spiral has started, it may be difficult to stop and can go from bad to worse in the short span of a single service exchange, but with far-reaching consequences, as discussed below.

The customer perspective: Perceived service failure leads to behaving antisocially

The service marketing literature often takes the customer perspective by focusing on determinants of customer satisfaction and service quality. In this literature, the starting point of negative exchange spirals is a perceived service failure and the resulting negative reaction of the customer, as shown in the upper left-hand portion of Figure 1. By negative reactions, we are referring to affective and cognitive internal states of the customer, which are then likely to influence behaviors such as decreased return visits and negative word of mouth.

Service failures: Negative exchange from the customer's perspective

The servqual framework, one of the earliest and still most widely known models of service quality, identifies five key dimensions which influence customer perceptions of service quality: reliability (i.e., employees provide consistent service), empathy (i.e., employees show a sincere interest), responsiveness (i.e., employees are willing to help), assurance (i.e., employees instill confidence), and tangibles (i.e., physical aspects of the service environment). Similarly, Johnston (1995) and Bitner and colleagues, using both qualitative and quantitative methods, identified a large array of satisfiers and dissatisfiers. Overall, these studies have shown that the interpersonal aspects of the frontline employee's service performance greatly influence a customer's service quality perceptions. When employees are less responsive, caring, or friendly, customers are less satisfied, and if they question the honesty and fairness of their treatment by the employee, customers can become altogether dissatisfied with the encounter.

Thus, a customer's perception that a service failure has occurred often hinges on the social and interpersonal nature of the exchange, especially given that other aspects of the service (e.g., efficiency, attentiveness) are intangible and offer limited objective reference points for customers to evaluate. As a consequence, the subjective experience of the interaction with frontline employees often is the service itself in the mind of the customer. In support of this view, Hoffman, Kelley, and Rotalsky (1995) found that employee rudeness, inappropriate verbal exchanges, and poor attitude were key characteristics of service failures. Moreover, Mattila, Grandey, and Fisk (2003) found that interpersonal failures of frontline staff occurring during hotel check-ins result in as much dissatisfaction as procedural service failures (i.e., inaccurate or inefficient service delivery).

Why perceiving service failures result in antisocial behavior

The theoretical assumption behind customer dissatisfaction is unmet expectations. In a theoretical model commonly referred to as the gaps model of service quality, each customer has unique expectations about desired service, adequate service, and predicted service, resulting in idiosyncratic demands on the employee that can be difficult to predict with each customer exchange. For customers, if the actual service delivery falls outside a"zone of tolerance" (bounded by desired service and adequate service), service dissatisfaction is triggered. The gaps model of service quality has received ample empirical support and appears to capture the key mechanisms driving the service failure–customer negative reactions link of our model. Moreover, service failures, especially interpersonal ones, are likely to elicit negative emotions in customers. Menon and Dubé (2000) found that rude and unhelpful behaviors by employees are the most frequent triggers of customer anger. Zeelenberg and Pieters (2004) found that regret and disappointment are two common affective reactions to service failure and linked these emotions with behavioral responses such as complaining, negative word of mouth, and service switching.

Another theoretical framework that helps explain why a customer feels negatively and engages in antisocial behaviors toward a service provider is that of justice perceptions. A service failure may be perceived as a form of distributive justice (fairness of outcomes received), procedural justice (fairness of the procedures or processes), and interactional justice (fairness of the treatment), all of which have been shown to be relevant in the context of employee–customer interactions. Moreover, these justice perceptions of the service are related to affective reactions. Evidence from both field studies and laboratory experiments shows that all three justice dimensions are related to customer experienced emotions. Customers who perceive unfairness in the service encounter and feel anger report a need to refrain from acting on it, and, when they do not, a tendency to engage in retaliatory behaviors. For example, Grégoire and Fisher (2008) identified customers' feelings of unfair treatment (i.e., betrayal) as a key link to retaliatory behaviors.

In the context of retail banking, Chebat and Slusarczyk (2005) found that interactional justice perceptions were a predictor of both positive and negative emotional responses, which ultimately affected exit behaviors. If the employee tried unsuccessfully to intervene and rectify a service failure, it caused customer anger that then translated into retaliatory behaviors.

Linking customers' negative reactions to employees' perceived mistreatment

When faced with service failures and these negative reactions, Hirschman's (1970) exit-voice-loyalty model suggests that customers may choose to exit the relationship and/or engage in negative word-of-mouth behaviors. That is, customers have only two possible responses to a perceived service failure: they can either withdraw from a service relationship by walking away from the dissatisfying experience (and presumably not return to the same service provider in the future), or they can voice their concerns (e.g., complain). However, Huefner and Hunt (2000) suggest that many dissatisfied customers do not clearly fit Hirschman's exit-voice-loyalty model and opt instead for aggressive or retaliatory behaviors towards the employee or the service firm. Our model focuses primarily on such antisocial behaviors.

We define antisocial customer behaviors as those that bring harm to a service organization and/or its members, consistent with Andersson and Pearson's (1999) definition of antisocial employee behaviors. It is therefore a broad concept that includes multiple forms of mistreatment, such as incivility (usually low-intensity deviant behavior that may or may not be intentional; Sliter, Jex, Wolford, & McInerney, 2010), customer aggression and violence (involving verbally or physically aggressive behavior; Grandey, Dickter, & Sin, 2004), deviant behavior (defined as violating specific norms; Harris & Reynolds, 2003), and being"jaycustomers" (those who act in a thoughtless or abusive manner, causing problems for the firm, employees, or other customers; Lovelock, 1994). For example, Harris and Reynolds (2004) examined critical incidents involving employees, managers, and customers and identified several types of customer deviance or"jaywalking": physical abuse, property abuse, vindictive acts (i.e., premeditated malicious behavior), and oral abuse. Oral abuse was the most frequent type of customer jaywalking, and was reported as a way for customers to communicate their dissatisfaction with a perceived service failure.

McColl-Kennedy and colleagues have examined customer rage, an intensive form of customer anger comprising a spectrum of negative emotions (e.g., ferocity, fury, disgust, contempt, scorn, and resentment) that trigger abusive behaviors. These authors show that certain types of rage lead to different rage expressions (e.g., rancorous rage and retaliatory rage) and that in employee–customer interactions customer rage can result from fairly minor incidents that have escalated over time and from missed opportunities for the service employee to rectify the situation. While rage is unlikely to occur in isolated negative exchanges, if prior exchanges at that company have been negative, a minor incident (e.g., a small service failure) may be enough to set off the customer and trigger this negative spiral. Some have argued that complaining to a person rather than through formal complaint channels provides catharsis for customers, reducing their dissatisfaction through the release of anger. However, considering such encounters to be an acceptable means for reducing negative outcomes is clearly customer-focused and has costs for the target employee and organization.

In sum, customers' negative reactions to service failures may trigger antisocial behaviors that can potentially turn them into"problem customers", engaging in"consumer misbehavior", or"dysfunctional customer behavior". Such behaviors can be directed toward other customers (e.g., negative word-of-mouth), or the organization (e.g., exit, avoidance). The focus of our model is on what happens when the customer's negative reactions result in antisocial behaviors toward the service provider, contributing to a negative exchange spiral. As shown in our model, these behaviors are likely to serve as input for the negative exchange outcomes affecting employees. Therefore, we propose the following research proposition:

Proposition 1: Customers' perceiving service failures increases the likelihood of the employee perceiving mistreatment during that interaction, via negative communications (i.e., customer rage, complaints).

The employee perspective: Perceived mistreatment leads to behaving antisocially

Researchers taking the employee perspective are typically trying to understand and predict worker well-being and work behaviors. From the employee perspective, antisocial customer behaviors – which may be a response to perceived service failures, as discussed above – are labeled as “difficult” or “stressful” behavior that harms employees. Thus, employees tend to attribute antisocial customer behaviors to the person rather than the situation.

Perceived mistreatment: Negative exchange from the employee's perspective

Using various samples of service employees, Dormann and Zapf (2004) identified multiple dimensions of customers as “social stressors,” with difficult-to-please customers (e.g., high expectations and ambiguous needs), disliked customers, and aggressive customers as sources of stress. Note that these dimensions capture both how customers influence performance effectiveness and how customers treat employees interpersonally. Similar to the customer's perspective, it is the interpersonal forms of customer misbehaviors that are most critical, and are often studied separately as incivility (e.g., rudeness that is ambiguously intended to harm), verbal abuse/aggression, and interpersonal injustice.

Why perceiving mistreatment results in antisocial behavior

Based on affective events theory, researchers have suggested that situations where customers engage in antisocial behaviors are negative affective events. Given the power differential between employees and customers and given that employees usually cannot choose their customers or remove themselves from negative affective events, these events often trigger negative emotions in service providers such as annoyance, anger, fear, sadness, frustration, disappointment, disgust, hurt, and unhappiness. Dallimore, Sparks, and Butcher (2007) demonstrated in experimental role plays that service providers' facial displays were congruent with those of customers (i.e., mimicry) and, when exposed to angry customers, they reported greater levels of negative affect. These results are consistent with emotional contagion theories, which predict the transfer of emotions from one person to another (Hatfield, Cacioppo & Rapson, 1994); however, most studies have examined the transfer of emotions from employees to customers, rather than the other way around. In a call center simulation, Wegge, Vogt, and Wecking (2007) demonstrated that rude customers, compared to polite ones, induced negative mood and, importantly, reduced the friendliness and task accuracy of service employees in dealing with customers.

Two broad categories of theories help to explain why the negative affect from “difficult customers” is linked to employees' antisocial behavior toward customers. The first is resource-based theories, which suggest that difficult customer behaviors result in resource depletion and exhaustion, making it harder for employees to perform at desired levels. The second category is fairness theories, which suggest that difficult customer behavior results in a sense of violation and anger that is expressed through more intentional retaliatory behaviors.

Conservation of resource theory (C.O.R) suggests that when personal resources, both psychological and physical, are at risk of being lost, anxiety and distress are often induced in individuals, resulting in additional resource depletion. In general, rude or angry behavior on the part of supervisors, coworkers, team members, or other sources is threatening to one's self-concept and thus leads to stress and reduced psychological well-being. Antisocial behavior from customers is more frequent than from these sources, due to the fact that employees are always considered"on stage" when interacting with customers and have limited opportunities to remove themselves from unpleasant customer interactions. Antisocial customer behavior thus has unique effects on burnout that exceed the effects of mistreatment from insiders. One such effect is emotional exhaustion, a dimension of employee burnout that has been studied as an outcome of customer mistreatment in voice-to-voice and face-to-face exchanges. Importantly for our dyadic exchange model, this depletion occurs even with just one or two exposures to mistreatment in laboratory experiments.

Similar to the customer's perspective, another theoretical lens that helps to understand the negative exchange spiral from the employee's perspective is that of the social exchange and justice literatures. Perceived mistreatment violates the provider's expectations for the exchange, as suggested by script theory. Script theory suggests that both social actors in a service interaction, the employee as well as the customer, have certain expectations about their own interpersonal behaviors as well as those of the other party, and these expectations are particularly clear in service interactions. Engaging in visible antisocial behaviors by either party is a clear deviation from scripts that both parties have implicitly agreed to when entering the service relationship. Script violations can distract the employee from the task in that the interaction becomes less automatic and requires more effort, thus reducing resources available for task-based performance. For example, Rupp and Spencer (2006) used an experimental call center simulation to show that difficult customers (e.g., lacking in courteous behavior, not providing necessary information) were perceived as interpersonally unfair, evoked anger in the service provider, and induced more effortful emotion regulation. In short, justice violations are often linked to service provider anger and may motivate the employee to"get even" with the customer, resulting in antisocial behaviors toward the customer.

Linking employees' negative reactions to customers' perceived service failure

According to the resource depletion perspective, when facing a stressful customer an employee will conserve future resources in ways that may harm performance, such as withdrawing from one's job or reducing one's emotional performance (e.g., venting/faking) or task performance. In the case of withdrawal, customer mistreatment may result in the desire to avoid customers as a means of coping (i.e., situation selection), thus reducing one's availability and responsiveness to customers. More broadly, verbal aggression has been linked to hotel workers' turnover intentions and, consistent with the C.O.R perspective, call center employee absences resulting from exhaustion.

Moreover, negative customer events require more employee effort to manage emotions in order to provide “service with a smile,” impairing performance as shown in the laboratory and in field settings. Having to fake and suppress emotions when dealing with customers also results in increased turnover of frontline employees. Effortful self-regulation is also likely to impair task performance through resource depletion during that interaction or the next interaction because self-regulation is an effortful process that can be taxing on an individual's limited regulatory resources. In other words, customer mistreatment increases the need to self-regulate, which depletes resources, including cognitive resources that could be allocated to the execution of other tasks. Thus, experiencing “difficult” customers is likely to accelerate the negative exchange spiral because the service provider's negative affective response must be regulated, reducing one's availability to customers and impacting cognitive and emotional performance.

According to justice theories, the individual may engage in purposeful retaliation or sabotage in response to their perceptions of unfair treatment and feelings of anger. In fact, Harris and Ogbonna (2002) report that more than 85% of service employees admitted to some form of service sabotage – service employee behaviors that are intentionally designed to negatively affect the service delivery – and 100% said they had witnessed it. Though these were sometimes explained as resulting from employee-related factors, for example, risk-seeking tendencies (Harris & Ogbanna, 2006), the most commonly reported reason was antisocial or “difficult” customers. In other words, antisocial treatment from the customer can result in reduced service performance by the employee, which is a service failure as perceived by the customer. And thus the spiral continues.

Employees may retaliate against perceived mistreatment or injustice in a variety of ways that accelerate the negative exchange spiral. Due to strict behavioral guidelines and display rules, customer-directed antisocial behavior such as venting anger is rare, although some employees reported intentionally patronizing or belittling customers. As above, where catharsis is seen as helpful to the customer, expressing felt anger may be positive for the employees themselves, providing benefits such as increased self-esteem and status, but the costs are high. Doucet (2004) found that employee hostility to call center customers evoked not only a negative mood in the customer (which may then be expressed back to the employee in the form of antisocial behavior) but also reduced evaluations of service quality and technical service performance.

In fact, even expressing mild incivility toward customers reduces service performance ratings. Van showed that experiencing incivility from customers was positively related to incivility towards customers, who then perceived this as poor performance. Sabotage or retaliatory behaviors are often likely to be indirect (e.g., affect another customer), covert (e.g., the customer does not know about it), or ambiguous (e.g., mild or attributable to the situation).

Several studies have demonstrated that antisocial customer behaviors result in counterproductive employee performance. Yang and Diefendorff (2009) conducted a diary study of frontline employees and found that experiencing customer interpersonal injustice was predictive of counterproductive workplace performance. behaviors, which may then result in decreased performance with that same customer or the next. Similarly, experiencing interpersonal injustice from customers was a significant predictor of sabotage behaviors by call center employees (e.g., hanging up on customers, intentionally putting them on hold, transferring them to the wrong department), which reduced objective indicators of task performance. Experience sampling of call center workers in China also revealed that mistreatment by customers was predictive of later service sabotage, and that this was more likely if employees lacked the ability to regulate their emotions. Employees have also reported using covert behaviors that may be identified by customers as unintentional service failures, such as slowing the service delivery speed or “accidental clumsiness”. In a survey study of a variety of different service contexts, Harris and Ogbonna (2006) found a direct relationship between service sabotage by employees and resulting performance, both at the employee level and at the firm level.

It is thus clear that employees respond to mistreatment with unintentional and intentional behaviors that degrade service performance. Employee behavioral outcomes serve as an input for the negative exchange, and the spiral accelerates from bad to worse with that customer or the next. This leads us to the following research proposition:

Proposition 2: Employees' perceiving customer mistreatment increases the likelihood of service failures during that interaction, via intentional (i.e., sabotage) or unintentional (i.e., resource depletion) reactions.

Open-loop spiral: Spillover to other customers and employees

A final part of our model is the recognition that these negative exchange spirals are not a closed loop, but can have far-reaching consequences for multiple other parties. It is important to note that the antisocial behaviors of both a customer and an employee can influence observers of the initial negative exchange spiral, thus creating a secondary exchange spiral. Observers might include the next customer in line or a person on the street who was previously considering patronizing the store.

Moreover, service interactions are sometimes directed toward groups of customers (e.g., a table of four at a restaurant); thus, how one customer responds to perceived mistreatment is likely to influence how others interpret the same event though social information processing. Affectively, observers of the negative exchange may “catch” the negative moods expressed either through primitive mimicry and feedback processes or by empathizing with one party or the other. In fact, recent findings have shown that customers who observe service failures involving other customers are likely to rate the quality of their own service experience as lower. Similarly, coworkers' observations of a customer mistreating another employee elicit negative emotions and cognitions similar to being the target themselves, resulting in heightened self-regulation to manage those emotions with their own customers.

Employee reactions to a negative exchange may also be directed – whether intentionally or unintentionally – toward a different customer, thus starting a new spiral. Service interactions are fairly brief, especially in service encounters, often leaving little opportunity for the employee to enact antisocial behaviors towards the offending customer. As a result, as reported by Harris and Ogbonna (2002), many antisocial behaviors of service employees may be delayed rather than immediately directed at the exchange in progress. For example, spoiling food of a subsequent patron or kicking down someone's bags when handling baggage can be targeted at the next customer because there simply was no opportunity for the employee to target the existing customer. Other examples of spillover include sabotage against the firm in general or collaborating with other employees to target one specific, unsuspecting customer. Call center studies show a relationship between customer mistreatment and sabotage, but research methods employed to date are unable to confirm whether the sabotage is toward the same person or a different one. If the latter is true, the anger and unfairness experienced by the employee may be “displaced” toward other customers, creating a service failure in another dyadic exchange. Overall, the dyadic negative exchange can spill over to another employee–customer exchange and create secondary spirals, as indicated by the dotted lines in Figure 1.

Proposition 3: Third-party customers and service providers who observe a negative service exchange are likely to start a negative exchange in their own service interactions.

Proposition 4: Employees' perceptions of customer mistreatment are likely to influence antisocial behavior and perceptions of service failures in their future interactions.

Negative employee-customer exchange spiral: Future directions

The goal of this paper is to advance an integrative, dual-perspective conceptual model of negative employee–customer exchanges, one that acknowledges the perspectives of both customers and employees. Thus, what is seen as a service failure from a customer's perspective (i.e., slow service, rude treatment) may actually be the employee's intentional (i.e., service sabotage) or unintentional (i.e., depleted resources) response to prior or current mistreatment by the customer. Similarly, what the employee perceives as difficult or stressful customer behavior may be the customer's expression of frustration or disappointment with prior or current service experiences. As both parties interact, these behaviors may become more pronounced and more negative, often resulting in negative exchanges among observers as well. Below we discuss how this model gives rise to new research questions and new methodological approaches.

Breaking negative exchange spirals: Dyadic, relational, and contextual characteristics

The propositions above illustrate how a customer's perception of service failure can lead an employee to perceive mistreatment, and vice versa. These linkages comprise the negative exchange spiral that can occur within a dyadic interaction. Once a negative spiral has started, it often quickly gains momentum, making it difficult to resolve. Both exchange partners may think that they are right and that the other person's behavior is unjustified, and both may fail to try to understand the other person's perspective.

But what factors can contribute to preventing, breaking, or at least slowing down the reciprocal paths of negative exchange spirals? To provide a truly comprehensive list of potential mitigating variables is beyond the scope of this article. Rather, given that our conceptual model takes a view of service exchanges as a series of systematic dyadic processes, we focus on several examples from a dyadic viewpoint.

We hope this will stimulate thinking about potential moderators and provide ideas for future research, given that empirical evidence for the reciprocal nature of our conceptual framework is scarce. The propositions below focus on factors that can slow the negative exchange spiral by addressing the overall linkages outlined in the above propositions and our model.

Dyadic fit of employee and customer characteristics

Most research tends to focus on the personal characteristics of either the employee or the customer, but the dyadic"match" or"fit" between the two parties is likely worth examining. For example, the emotional intelligence of employees (i.e., one's ability to recognize and regulate emotions in oneself and others; Mayer & Salovey, 1997) has been shown to improve job performance for employees in jobs with high emotional demands, such as service work. We note that if either party has a high ability to perceive emotions, this may actually make employees or customers more"sensitive" to mistreatment due to perceiving even masked emotions. Overall, though, if either party has the ability to regulate emotions this should reduce the affective reactions to such perceived failures or mistreatment and thus slow the negative exchange spirals. Moreover, emotional intelligence can be used to manipulate others. Though most attention to this type of dyadic exchange has been directed at leader-follower exchanges, employees' emotional intelligence could be used to manage the emotions of customers, or vice versa, to reduce the negative exchange. Overall, we suggest that if both of the parties are low in the ability to regulate emotions in self or others the likelihood of a negative exchange spiral beginning or escalating is highly likely.

In contrast, if at least one party is high in emotional regulatory ability then the spiral should not escalate. One caveat to this is that the ability to regulate emotions does not necessarily mean that they are motivated to do so; for example, highly emotionally intelligent customers may be able to exaggerate their anger in order to manipulate the situation for desired outcomes. Future research should consider motivational factors in conjunction with ability, but as a starting point we suggest:

Proposition 5: In service exchanges where both the employee and the customer have low emotional intelligence (specifically ability to regulate emotions), negative exchange spirals are most likely to occur, but this decreases as one or both parties' emotional intelligence increases.

Negative affectivity of employees is linked to experiencing mistreatment by customers due to either creating negative exchanges or perceiving exchanges as negative, which accelerates the spiral by increasing retaliatory attempts. Customers' negative affectivity is likely to have similar effects. How does the “match” of negative affectivity between employee and customer influence the negative exchange spiral? Do two “wrongs” make a “right” because they are responding in congruent ways?

Does a negatively affective person with a positively affective person exacerbate the negative exchange or reduce it? Recent research by Gross et al. (2011) suggests that customers with high positive affect may have an “undoing” effect on the negative exchange spiral for the employee, and vice versa. Furthermore, Tan, Foo, and Kwek (2004) have shown that customers' affective traits impact the displayed emotions of service providers, which in turn predicts customer satisfaction with the service provider. In other words, customers influence their own service experience through reciprocal exchanges with employees. Thus, we propose:

Proposition 6: Employee and customer affectivity interact to predict negative exchange spirals, such that high negative affect from both parties increases the likelihood of the spirals, but when one exchange partner is high in positive affect it reduces the likelihood of a negative exchange spiral starting or escalating.

Another type of dyadic characteristic that should be assessed is the cognitions (i.e., attitudes, values, or beliefs) about customer service held by the employee and the customer. Di Mascio (2010) shows that service employees can differ quite substantially in their interpretation of what good service delivery is and what is important to customers. Researchers interested in the customer-focused perspective assess the employee's customer orientation – that is, the employee's interest in and ability to fulfill customers' service-related needs. In response to display rules, employees with lower customer orientation are more likely to fake their emotional displays than those with higher customer orientation, who may be more able to naturally express positive emotions. But what if such employees are dealing with a difficult or antisocial customer? In such a case, perhaps a high customer orientation creates a stronger negative reaction because it becomes harder to meet the customer's needs and thereby satisfy one's own personal goals and values.

Moreover, what happens when an employee high in customer orientation encounters a customer with high consumer entitlement and thus has extremely high expectations for the service exchange? Such an employee may work hard to meet the customer's needs, but may experience more depletion and be unable to help the next customer as a result. Based on this research, we propose the following:

Proposition 7: Employee customer orientation and customer entitlement interact to predict the likelihood of negative exchange spirals, such that when customer orientation is low and entitlement is high, the negative exchange spirals will be more intense, quicker to occur, and slower to dissipate than if both are low or both are high.

A key theme in our paper is that reappraisal – changing how one perceives the situation, or perspective-taking – the ability to put oneself in another's shoes – should have the potential to slow down or stop many of the negative spiraling paths in service exchanges. Bitner (1990) has shown that if no information about causes of service failure is present, the fundamental attribution error is likely to occur (e.g., the service provider is considered incompetent or unmotivated), resulting in negative reactions and antisocial behaviors. In contrast, if the customer is informed about external or uncontrollable attributions (e.g., the employee is new), such negative outcomes are less likely. Thus, providing customers with opportunities to reappraise a service failure as being due to external and uncontrollable causes may prevent negative reactions that would otherwise exacerbate the negative exchange. Similarly, employees who tend to engage in perspective-taking to modify feelings (e.g., deep acting) view customer hostility as less stressful than those who do not and tend to be better service performers. In a lab-based study, perspective-taking helped to reduce service providers' negative responses to difficult or stressful interpersonal situations, and even increases the likelihood of accepting unfair or undesirable outcomes. Though this would not be desirable or ethical in the long-run, reappraisal or perspective taking clearly reduces the interaction's negative exchange.

Proposition 8: Reappraisal or perspective-taking by either the employee or the customer will prevent or slow down negative exchange spirals.

Employee—customer relationship

There are many ways to describe the employee–customer relationship: the temporal relationship (e.g., one-time service encounters between strangers versus long-term personal relationships; Gutek et al., 1999), relationship strength, and relational intimacy. These dimensions are expected to have a substantial impact on the reciprocal dynamics of negative exchanges, although empirical research on this dyadic characteristic is lacking. For example, negative emotional expressions are more acceptable between parties who are familiar with each other and have an ongoing service relationship due to increased empathy in addressing conflicts and mutual interest in improving the relationship. However, this may not be the case with service exchanges. In service encounters or low-intimacy exchanges, customers tend to be more likely to communicate their displeasure because they lack accountability and motivation to control their expressions. Moreover, it is likely that ongoing or close service relationships buffer the negative escalation of exchange spirals through the presence of actual liking and empathy, as well as a motivation to improve the situation given the likelihood of future interaction. Research on dyadic communication in organizations has found that exchange partners may have either a more instrumental or more expressive approach to communicating with each other, with interaction patterns often changing from the former to the latter as relationships grow. In the context of employee–customer relationships, we expect that the likelihood of negative exchange spirals is reduced when both parties have a less instrumental and more expressive approach toward their exchange partner. However, a mismatch where the expectations of one exchange partner do not meet the other's (e.g., a customer views the exchange as a professional friendship whereas the employee takes a purely transactional approach) can greatly increase the likelihood that negative exchange spirals will emerge.

Employees who have service relationships (i.e., have ongoing clients) are more likely to have supportive interactions that can reduce the spillover effects of negative exchanges. Fredrickson (2003) suggested that a person's experience of positive emotions can have interactive upward-spiraling effects within organizations, leading to positive outcomes for both the individual and the organization. In fact, customers can be a source of support for employees experiencing stress, improving their moods and thus reducing the likelihood of future negative exchanges, and employees with greater job tenure (and therefore more relationships) are less likely to react to mistreatment with sabotage. Thus, we propose the following:

Proposition 9: Negative exchanges are less likely to spiral and worsen in service relationship exchanges (vs. one-time encounters), and are less likely to spill over to other exchanges when the employee has other service relationships.

Context surrounding the dyadic exchange

Finally, there may be contextual characteristics that accelerate or slow down negative exchange spirals. For example, employee empowerment can play a critical role during service failures, giving employees the latitude to correct problems as they occur and thereby mitigating employee and customer frustration and antisocial behaviors. Because service contexts vary in the extent to which they value and prioritize customer needs and latitude, when employees are low in empowerment or autonomy, they report more customer aggression and emotional exhaustion.

In contrast to the autonomy of empowerment, a common theme in both the employee and customer perspectives is the use of formal organizational controls used to minimize antisocial behaviors by frontline staff. Unit-level display rules (i.e., social norms about appropriate emotional displays to customers) increase the likelihood that negative affect is suppressed; however, controlling displays rather than display autonomy reduces employee resources available for task performance, resulting in service failure. From the customer perspective, research has explored management practices to recover from service failures, that is, ways to apologize or compensate a customer for a process or outcome failure. However, many service organizations do not have effective recovery strategies in place or, if they do, are not successful in effectively recovering from service breakdowns. McColl-Kennedy and Sparks (2003) found that if a service failure occurred without reasonable attempts to immediately recover, customers experienced anger and frustration. Thus, the management controls currently in place to reduce negative exchanges may be minimally effective.

Proposition 10: Organizational practices that enhance employee autonomy, rather than control displays or stipulate service recovery, are more effective at reducing negative exchanges with customers.

Furthermore, we propose that management practices should use socialization practices to help set realistic service expectations for both employees and customers with regard to appropriate behavior, in order to minimize the negative exchange spiral. For example, when customers were aware of the length of a waiting queue, they were less frustrated than when simply hearing music because it allowed them to set realistic expectations (Munichor & Rafaeli, Similarly, if employees are aware of what is a realistic and acceptable length of time to wait, they can employ service recovery tactics when most appropriate. In contrast, when employees and customers are told that customers are"always right" and should"have it their way," it suggests unreasonable and ambiguous standards, increasing expectations and communicating that mistreating employees is acceptable. Thus, customer socialization through such means as organizational literature, environmental cues, realistic service previews, or setting expectations for service delivery enables the company to manage customers' expectations of and participation in the service delivery and to communicate which types of behaviors are or are not acceptable. Making customers more accountable and aware of their role in the exchange increases the likelihood that they will assume responsibility for their part in a service delivery failure. Providing customers with constructive suggestions about how to take greater ownership of the delivery process empowers them as though they were partial employees. Taking such measures also decreases the likelihood that a perceived service failure will result in negative reactions and antisocial behaviors. Thus, we propose:

Proposition 11: Socialization practices that communicate realistic service expectations and inform customers they are “partial employees” will reduce the occurrence of negative exchange spirals.

Another contextual factor that may help slow the negative exchange spiral is facilitation of organizational support for service. This might take the form of a climate for service, a shared perception of the importance of providing excellent customer service that emphasizes the value of the employee and is associated with employee engagement and satisfaction. Such a context has been shown to reduce the strain of customer interactions, thus reducing the likelihood of negative exchanges. Singh (2000) showed that social support from one's supervisor buffers performance and motivation decrements from stressful customer encounters. Similarly, the extent that employees can express feelings with team members, called a climate of authenticity, has been shown to buffer service providers from the strain of managing emotions in response to mistreatment by patients. Thus, the organizational context can reduce the spiral by providing an outlet for the employee to release emotions and gain support for those negative feelings without directing them toward the customer.

Proposition 12: Providing an organizational or team climate that rewards and supports service employees will reduce negative exchange spirals.

While our dual-perspective framework provides an initial understanding of the bidirectional nature of employee and customer interactions, we hope that our research propositions will stimulate future research that explores the factors that may accelerate or decelerate spiraling effects in customer service exchanges.

New methodological directions for examining negative exchange spirals

This dual-perspective approach to understanding negative employee–customer spirals requires a methodology that captures the dyadic nature of service interactions. Unfortunately, the majority of research cited in our literature review relied on survey data that had asked either customers or employees to retrospectively recount their experience during service interactions in general. As discussed by Gooty and Yammarino (2011), this is common in organizational research, which often neglects the dyad as a level of analysis in favor of focusing on individuals, groups/teams, and organizations. Dyadic relationships are not merely underrepresented in the literature; Schriesheim, Castro, Zhou, and Yammarino (2001) have identified the dyad as the least studied level of analysis in much of the current research.

An important point raised by our model is that measures of the dyadic relationship need to be obtained from both the employee and customer perspectives. Similar to the findings of studies on leader–member exchange, we expect that employees and customers are unlikely to agree on the quality or mutual value of their relationships. A hairdresser may believe that her client sees her as “his hairdresser” and that they have an ongoing and positive relationship, while the client may actually be displeased but has not yet found another hairdresser.

A regular customer may believe that she has a friendly and ongoing relationship with the corner shop's coffee clerk, but he only smiles at her for the tips and actually does not like her. Assessing differences in perceptions may help to explain when and why negative exchanges are more likely to occur.

Much of the previous research has also depended on asking retroactive or general questions about services, rather than about specific interactions. Focusing on the service transaction would provide a better basis for understanding some of the interpersonal dynamics discussed in this paper. Research using multiple sources of data, ideally collected directly from employees and customers, are also needed in order to test some of the reci- procal relationships proposed in our model.

Fortunately, studies using multiple sources of data are becoming more common in the serv- ices literature, although often the specific research design does not allow linking a spe- cific employee to a specific customer in a dyadic fashion, thus making it impossible to examine the service transaction itself as the unit of analysis. In addition, some of the previous research using multiple data sources within the context of service delivery has focused on the organizational or team level rather than on individual service episodes. Other studies with multiple sources of data often do not collect attitudinal data from both customers and employees, but rather match attitudinal data from one source with observations or performance data from the other source.

As we have argued above, to truly understand both of the exchange partners' motivations, perspectives, and attitudes about their own behaviors and those of the exchange partner, more study designs will need to adopt a strictly dyadic approach in assessing both exchange partners' experiences of the same service interaction, ideally measured as the interaction unfolds in real time or immediately following it. Unfortunately, such study designs are rare. Even rarer is a research design that asks the same questions of both employees and customers regarding their perceptions of the same service interaction, thereby elucidating how these perceptions may be similar or different. Such insights would go a long way toward capturing some of the dual-perspective processes of service interactions proposed in this paper.

Thus, we call for future research on employee-customer service interactions in general, and negative service exchange spirals in particular, that places an increased emphasis on study designs which take into account the reciprocal, dual-perspective nature of service exchanges. Such an approach acknowledges that employee attitudes and behaviors have a direct and immediate link to customer attitudes and behaviors, and vice versa. In addition, we suggest that future research should employ research designs that allow multiple, momentary assessments during service interactions, such as experience sampling methods. One recent example is the use of mobile phone technology to capture repeated measures of consumer affective reactions over a period of time (Andrews, Russell-Bennett, & Drennan, 2011). Although researchers are increasingly utilizing technologies that enable experience sampling methods, applications that assess employee attitudes and customer attitudes throughout different stages of the same service interaction remain extremely rare.

Conclusions

We have demonstrated that two literatures on negative employee–customer exchanges are related but tend to be treated separately. By integrating them, we show that the outcomes from one perspective are the inputs for the other by way of similar mechanisms. This integration suggests a negative exchange spiral that can also spill over to secondary spirals with other parties. Our integrated model suggests that future research should use dyadic and multilevel methods to answer questions regarding how employee–customer or dyadic fit, relational characteristics, and contextual features might decelerate this negative exchange, and keep things from spiraling out of control.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

References

Abelson, R. P. (1981). Psychological status of the script concept. American Psychologist, 36(7), 715–729. doi: 10.1037//0003-066X.36.7.715

Allen, J. A., Pugh, S. D., Grandey, A. A., & Groth, M. (2010). Following display rules in good or bad faith? Customer orientation as a moderator of the display rule-emotional labor relationship. Human Performance, 23(2), 101–115.

Andersson, L. M., & Pearson, C. M. (1999). Tit for tat? The spiraling effect of incivility in the workplace. Academy of Management Review, 24(3), 452–471. doi: 10.2307/259136

Andrews, L., Russell-Bennett, R., & Drennan, J. (2011). Capturing affective experiences using the SMS Experience Sampling (SMS-ES) method. International Journal of Market Research, 53(4), 479–506. doi: 10.2501/IJMR-53-4-479-506

Ashkanasy, N. M. (2003). Emotion in organizations: A multi-level perspective. In F. Dansereau & F. J. Yammarino (Eds.), Research in multi-level issues (2nd ed., Vol. 2, pp. 9–54). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science. doi: 10.1016/S1475-9144(03)02002-2

Barger, P. B., & Grandey, A. A. (2006). Service with a smile and encounter satisfaction: Emotional contagion and appraisal mechanisms. Academy of Management Journal, 49(6), 1229–1238.

Barry, B., & Crant, M. (2000). Dyadic communication relationships in organizations: An attribution/expectancy approach. Organization Science, 11(6), 648–664.

Basch, J., & Fisher, C. D. (2000). Affective events—emotions matrix: A classification of work events and associated emotions. In N. M. Ashkanasy, C. E. J. Hartel, & W. Zerbe (Eds.), Emotions in the workplace: Research, theory, and practice (pp. 36–48). Westport, CT: Quorum Books.

Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Muraven, M., & Tice, D. M. (1998). Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(5), 1252–1265.

Ben-Zur, H., & Yagil, D. (2005). The relationship between empowerment, aggressive behaviours of customers, coping, and burnout. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 14(1), 81–99. doi: 10.1080/13594320444000281

Bennett, R. (1997). Anger, catharsis, and purchasing behavior following aggressive customer complaints. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 14(2), 156–172.

Bettencourt, L. A., Brown, S. W., & MacKenzie, S. B. (2005). Customer-oriented boundary-spanning behaviors: Test of a social exchange model of antecedents. Journal of Retailing, 81(2), 141–157.

Bitner, M. J. (1990). Evaluating service encounters: The effects of physical surroundings and employee responses. Journal of Marketing, 54, 69–83.

Bitner, M. J., Booms, B. H., & Mohr, L. A. (1994). Critical service encounters: The employee's viewpoint. Journal of Marketing, 58, 95–106.

Bitner, M. J., Booms, B. H., & Tetreault, M. S. (1990). The service encounter: Diagnosing favorable and unfavorable incidents. Journal of Marketing, 54, 71–84.

Blodgett, J. G., Hill, D. J., & Tax, S. S. (1997). The effects of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice on postcomplaint behavior. Journal of Retailing, 73, 185–210.

Bougie, R., Pieters, R., & Zeelenberg, M. (2003). Angry customers don't come back, they get back: The experience and behavioral implications of anger and dissatisfaction in services. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 31(4), 377–393. doi: 10.1177/0092070303254412

Bowen, J., & Ford, R. C. (2002). Managing service organizations: Does having a “thing” make a difference? Journal of Management, 28, 447–469.

Bowen, D. E., Gilliland, S. W., & Folger, R. (1999). HRM and service fairness: How being fair with employees spills over to customers. Organizational Dynamics, 27(3), 7–23.

Bowen, D. E., & Lawler, E. E. (1995). Empowering service employees. Sloan Management Review, 36(4), 73–84.

Brady, M. K., & Cronin Jr., J. (2001). Some new thoughts on conceptualizing perceived service quality: A hierarchical approach. Journal of Marketing, 65, 34–49.

Brown, T. J., Mowen, J. C., Donavan, D. T., & Licata, J. W. (2002). The customer orientation of service workers: Personality trait effects on self- and supervisor performance ratings. Journal of Marketing Research, 19, 110–119.

Brown, T.J., & Swartz, T.A. (1989). A gap analysis of professional service quality. Journal of Marketing, 53, 92–98.

Casado-Diaz, A. B., Más-Ruiz, F. J., & Kasper, H. (2007). Explaining satisfaction in double deviation scenarios: The effects of anger and distributive justice. International Journal of Bank Marketing, 25(5), 292–314.

Chau, S. L., Dahling, J. J., Levy, P. E., & Diefendorff, J. M. (2009). A predictive study of emotional labor and turnover. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 30, 1151–1163.

Chebat, J., & Slusarczyk, W. (2005). How emotions mediate the effects of perceived justice on loyalty in service recovery situations: An empirical study. Journal of Business Research, 58(5), 664–673. doi: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2003.09.005

Côté, S., DeCelles, K. A., McCarthy, J. M., van Kleef, G. A., & Hideg, I. (2011). The Jekyll and Hyde of emotional intelligence: Emotion-regulation knowledge facilitates both prosocial and interpersonally deviant behavior. Psychological Science, 22(8), 1073–1080. doi: 10.1177/0956797611416251

Coulter, R. A., & Ligas, M. (2004). A typology of customer-service provider relationships: The role of relational factors in classifying customers. Journal of Services Marketing, 18(6), 482–493.

Dallimore, K. S., Sparks, B. A., & Butcher, K. (2007). The influence of angry customer outbursts on service providers' facial displays and affective states. Journal of Service Research, 10(1), 78–92. doi: 10.1177/1094670507304694

Dansereau, F., Graen, G., & Haga, W. J. (1975). A vertical dyad linkage approach to leadership within formal organizations: A longitudinal investigation of the role making process. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 13(1), 46–78.

Diefendorff, J. M., Erickson, R. J., Grandey, A. A., & Dahling, J. J. (2011). Emotional display rules as work unit norms: A multilevel analysis of emotional labor among nurses. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 16(2), 170–186. doi:10.1037/a0021725

Diefendorff, J. M., Morehart, J., & Gabriel, A. (2010). The influence of power and solidarity on emotional display rules at work. Motivation and Emotion, 34, 120–132.

Diefendorff, J. M., Richard, E. M., & Yang, J. (2008). Linking emotion regulation strategies to affective events and negative emotions at work. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 73, 498–508.

Di Mascio, R. (2010). The service models of frontline employees. Journal of Marketing, 74(4), 63–80. doi: 10.1509/jmkg.74.4.63

Dormann, C., & Zapf, D. (2004). Customer-related social stressors and burnout. Journal of Occupational and Health Psychology, 9(1), 61–82.

Doucet, L. (2004). Service provider hostility and service quality. Academy of Management Journal, 47(5), 761–771.

Drach-Zahavy, A. (2010). How does service workers' behavior affect their health? Service climate as a moderator in the service behavior–health relationships. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 15(2), 105–119.

Ehrhart, K. H., Witt, L. A., Schneider, B., & Perry, S. J. (2011). Service employees give as they get: Internal service as a moderator of the service climate–service outcomes link. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(2), 423–431. doi: 10.1037/a0022071

Elfenbein, H. A. (2007). Emotion in organizations. The Academy of Management Annals, 1(1), 315–386.

Elfenbein, H. A., & Ambady, N. (2002). Predicting workplace outcomes from the ability to eavesdrop on feelings. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(5), 963–971.

Folger, R., & Cropanzano, R. (1998). Organizational justice and human resource management. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Folkes, V. S. (1984). Consumer reactions to product failure: An attributional approach. Journal of Consumer Research, 10(4), 398–409.

Fredrickson, B. L. (2003). Positive emotions and upward spirals in organizations. In K. Cameron, J. Dutton, & R. Quinn (Eds.), Positive organizational scholarship (pp. 163–175). San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.

Friend, L. A., Costley, C. L., & Brown, C. (2010). Spirals of distrust vs spirals of trust in retail customer service: Consumers as victims or allies. Journal of Services Marketing, 24(6), 458–467. doi: 10.1108/08876041011072573

Fullerton, R. A., & Punjab, G. (1997). What is consumer misbehavior? Advances in Consumer Research, 24, 336–339.

Gettman, H. J., & Gelfand, M. J. (2007). When the customer shouldn't be king: Antecedents and consequences of sexual harassment by clients and customers. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(3), 757–770. doi: 10.1037/0021-9010.92.3.757

Goldberg, L. A., & Grandey, A. A. (2007). Display rules versus display autonomy: Emotion regulation, emotional exhaustion, and task performance in a call center simulation. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 12(3), 301–318.

Goodwin, C. (1988). “I can do it myself”: Training the service consumer to contribute to service productivity. Journal of Services Marketing, 2(4), 71–78.

Goodwin, R. E., Groth, M., & Frenkel, S. J. (2011). Relationships between emotional labor, job performance, and turnover. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 79(2), 538–548. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2011.03.001

Gooty, J., & Yammarino, F. J. (2011). Dyads in organizational research: Conceptual issues and multilevel analyses. Organizational Research Methods, 14(3), 456–483. doi: 10.1177/1094428109358271

Graen, G. B., & Uhl-Bien, M. (1995). Relationship-based approach to leadership: Development of leader-member exchange (LMX) theory of leadership over 25 years: Applying a multilevel multi-domain perspective. Leadership Quarterly, 6(2), 219–247.

Grandey, A. A., Dickter, D. N., & Sin, H. P. (2004). The customer is not always right: Customer aggression and emotion regulation of service employees. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 25, 397–418.

Grandey, A., Foo, S. C., Groth, M., & Goodwin, R. E. (2012). Free to be you and me: A climate of authenticity alleviates burnout from emotional labor. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 17(1), 1–14. doi: 10.1037/a0025102

Grandey, A. A., Kern, J. H., & Frone, M. R. (2007). Verbal abuse from outsiders versus insiders: Comparing frequency, impact on emotional exhaustion, and the role of emotional labor.

Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 12(1), 63–79.

Greenberg, J. (1996). “Forgive me, I’m new”: Three experimental demonstrations of the effects of attempts to excuse poor performance. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 66(2), 165–178. doi: 10.1006/obhd.1996.0046

Grégoire, Y., & Fisher, R. J. (2008). Customer betrayal and retaliation: When your best customers become your worst enemies. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 36(2), 247–261. doi: 10.1007/s11747-007-0054-0

Gross, S., Semmer, N. K., Meier, L. L., Kälin, W., Jacobshagen, N., & Tschan, F. (2011). The effect of positive events at work on after-work fatigue: They matter most in face of adversity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(3), 654–664. doi:10.1037/a0022992

Groth, M., & Goodwin, R. E. (2011). Customer service. APA Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology, Vol. 3: Maintaining, expanding, and contracting the organization (pp. 329–357). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Groth, M., Hennig-Thurau, T., & Walsh, G. (2009). Customer reactions to emotional labor: The roles of employee acting strategies and customer detection accuracy. Academy of Management Journal, 52(5), 958–974.

Gutek, B. A. (1995). The dynamics of service: Reflections on the changing nature of customer/provider interactions. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Gutek, B. A., Bhappu, A. D., Liao-Troth, M. A., & Cherry, B. (1999). Distinguishing between service relationships and encounters. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84, 218–233.

Gutek, B. A., Groth, M., & Cherry, B. (2002). Achieving service success through relationships and enhanced encounters. Academy of Management Executive, 16, 132–144.

Hareli, S., & Rafaeli, A. (2008). Emotion cycles: On the social influence of emotion in organizations. Research in Organizational Behavior, 28, 35–59. doi: 10.1016/j.riob.2008.04.007

Harris, L. C., & Ogbonna, E. (2002). Exploring service sabotage: The antecedents, types and

consequences of frontline, deviant, antiservice behaviors. Journal of Service Research, 4(3), 163–183. doi: 10.1177/1094670502004003001

Harris, L. C., & Ogbonna, E. (2006). Service sabotage: A study of antecedents and consequences. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 34(4), 543–558.

Harris, L. C., & Reynolds, K. L. (2003). The consequences of dysfunctional customer behavior. Journal of Service Research, 6(2), 144–161.

Harris, L. C., & Reynolds, K. L. (2004). Jaycustomer behavior: An exploration of types and motives in the hospitality industry. Journal of Services Marketing, 18(5), 339–357. doi: 10.1108/08876040410548276

Hart, C. W. L., Heskett, J. L., & Sasser III, W. E. (1990). The profitable art of service recovery. Harvard Business Review, 68(4), 148–156.

Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Rapson, R. L. (1994). Emotional contagion. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Hennig-Thurau, T., Groth, M., Paul, M., & Gremler, D. D. (2006). Are all smiles created equal? How emotional contagion and emotional labor affect service relationships. Journal of Marketing, 70(3), 58–73.

Hirschman, A. O. (1970). Exit, voice, and loyalty: Responses to decline in firms, organizations, and states (Vol. 356). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hobfoll, S. (2002). Social and psychological resources and adaptations. Review of General Psychology, 6, 302–324.

Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Hoffman, K. D., Kelley, S. W., & Rotalsky, H. M. (1995). Tracking service failures and employee recovery efforts. Journal of Services Marketing, 9(2), 49–61. doi: 10.1108/08876049510086017

Homburg, C., Müller, M., & Klarmann, M. (2011). When should the customer really be king? On the optimum level of salesperson customer orientation in sales encounters. Journal of Marketing, 75(2), 55–74.

Huefner, J. C., & Hunt, H. K. (2000). Consumer retaliation as a response to dissatisfaction. Journal of

Consumer Satisfaction Dissatisfaction and Com- plaining Behavior, 13(1), 61–82.

Hülsheger, U. R., & Schewe, A. F. (2011). On the costs and benefits of emotional labor: A meta-analysis of three decades of research. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 16(3), 361–389. doi: 10.1037/a0022876

Johnston, R. (1995). The determinants of service quality: Satisfiers and dissatisfiers. International Journal of Service Industry Management, 6(5), 53–71. doi: 10.1108/09564239510101536

Joseph, D. L., & Newman, D. A. (2010). Emotional intelligence: An integrative meta-analysis and cascading model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(1), 54–78.

Judge, T. A., Fluegge Woolf, E., & Hurst, C. (2009). Is emotional labor more difficult for some than for others? A multilevel, experience-sampling study. Personnel Psychology, 62, 57–88.

Kelley, S. W., Skinner, S. J., & Donnelly Jr., J. H. (1992). Organizational socialization of service customers. Journal of Business Research, 25, 197–214.

Kern, J. H., & Grandey, A. A. (2009). Customer incivility as a social stressor: The role of race and racial identity for service employees. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 14(1), 46–57. doi: 10.1037/a0012684

Lam, C. K., Huang, X., & Janssen, O. (2010). Contextualizing emotional exhaustion and positive emotional display: The signaling effects of supervisors' emotional exhaustion and service climate. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(2), 368–376.

Lavelle, J. J., Rupp, D. E., & Brockner, J. (2007). Taking a multifoci approach to the study of justice, social exchange, and citizenship behavior: The target similarity model. Journal of Management, 33(6), 841–866. doi: 10.1177/0149206307307635

LeBlanc, M. M., & Kelloway, E. K. (2002). Predictors and outcomes of workplace violence and aggression. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 444–453

Liao, H., & Subramony, M. (2008). Employee customer orientation in manufacturing organizations: Joint influences of customer proximity

and the senior leadership team. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(2), 317–328. doi: 10.1037/0021-9010.93.2.317

Lim, S., Cortina, L. M., & Magley, V. J. (2008). Personal and workgroup incivility: Impact on work and health outcomes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(1), 95–107. doi: 10.1037/0021-9010.93.1.95

Lin, J. S. C., & Lin, C. Y. (2011). What makes service employees and customers smile: Antecedents and consequences of the employee's affective delivery in the service encounter. Journal of Service Management, 22(2), 183–211. doi:10.1108/09564231111124217

Lindsley, D. H., Brass, D. J., & Thomas, J. B. (1995). Efficacy-performance spirals: A multilevel perspective. Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 645–678.

Lord, R. G., & Kernan, M. C. (1987). Scripts as determinants of purposeful behavior in organizations. Academy of Management Review, 12(2), 265–277.

Lovelock, C. H. (1994). Product plus: How product + service = competitive advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Manolis, C., Meamber, L. A., Winsor, R. D., & Brooks, C. M. (2001). Partial employees and consumers: A postmodern, meta-theoretical perspective for services marketing. Marketing Theory, 1(2), 225–243. doi: 10.1177/147059310100100204

Martínez-Iñigo, D., Totterdell, P., Alcover, C. M., & Holman, D. (2007). Emotional labour and emotional exhaustion: Interpersonal and intrapersonal mechanisms. Work & Stress, 21(1), 30–47.

Masuch, M. (1985). Vicious circles in organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 30(1), 14–33. doi: 10.2307/2392809

Matsumoto, D., Yoo, S. H., Hirayama, S., & Petrova, G. (2005). Development and validation of a measure of display rule knowledge: The display rule assessment inventory. Emotion, 5(1), 23–40.

Mattila, A. S., & Enz, C. A. (2002). The role of emotions in service encounters. Journal of Service Research, 4, 268–277.

Mattila, A. S., Grandey, A. A., & Fisk, G. M. (2003). The interplay of gender and affective tone in

service encounter satisfaction. Journal of Service Research, 6, 136–143.

Maxham III, J. G., & Netemeyer, R. G. (2002). A longitudinal study of complaining customers' evaluations of multiple service failures and recovery efforts. Journal of Marketing, 66, 57–71.

Mayer, J. D., & Salovey, P. (1997). What is emotional intelligence. In P. Salovey & D. J. Sluyter (Eds.), Emotional development and emotional intelligence (pp. 3–31). New York, NY: Basic Books.

McColl-Kennedy, J. R., & Sparks, B. A. (2003). Application of fairness theory to service failures and service recovery. Journal of Service Research, 5, 251–266.

McColl-Kennedy, J. R., Patterson, P. G., Smith, A. K., & Brady, M. K. (2009). Customer rage episodes: Emotions, expressions and behaviors. Journal of Retailing, 85(2), 222–237. doi: 10.1016/j.jretai.2009.04.002

Menon, K., & Dubé, L. (2000). Ensuring greater satisfaction by engineering salesperson response to customer emotions. Journal of Retailing, 76(3), 285–307. doi: 10.1016/S0022-4359(00)00034-8

Miner, A. G., Glomb, T. M., & Hulin, C. (2005). Experience sampling mood and its correlates at work. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 78, 171–193.

Munichor, N., & Rafaelli, A. (2007). Numbers or apologies? Customer reactions to telephone waiting time fillers. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(2), 511–518.

Muraven, M., & Baumeister, R. F. (2000). Self-regulation and depletion of limited resources: Does self-control resemble a muscle? Psychological Bulletin, 126(2), 247–259.

Olson-Buchanan, J. B., & Boswell, W. R. (2008). An integrative model of experiencing and responding to mistreatment at work. Academy of Management Review, 33(1), 76–96. doi: 10.2307/20159377

Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. A., & Berry, L. L. (1988). SERVQUAL: A multiple-item scale for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality. Journal of Retailing, 64(1), 12–40.

Parker, S. K., & Axtell, C. M. (2001). Seeing another viewpoint: Antecedents and outcomes of employee perspective taking. Academy of Management Journal, 44(6), 1085–1100.

Penney, L. M., & Spector, P. E. (2005). Job stress, incivility, and counterproductive work behavior (CWB): The moderating role of negative affectivity. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26(7), 777–796. doi: 10.1002/job.336

Price, L. L., Arnould, E. J., & Deibler, L., S. (1995). Consumers' emotional responses to service encounters. International Journal of Service Industry Management, 6, 34–63.

Pugh, S. D. (2001). Service with a smile: Emotional contagion in the service encounter. Academy of Management Journal, 44, 1018–1027.

Rafaeli, A., & Sutton, R. I. (1987). Expression of emotion as part of the work role. Academy of Management Review, 12, 23–37.

Reynolds, K. L., & Harris, L. C. (2009). Dysfunctional customer behavior severity: An empirical examination. Journal of Retailing, 85(3), 321–335. doi: 10.1016/j.jretai.2009.05.005

Richards, J. M., & Gross, J. J. (1999). Composure at any cost? The cognitive consequences of emotion suppression. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25(8), 1033–1044.

Rupp, D. E., McCance, S. A., Spencer, S., & Sonntag, K. (2008). Customer (in)justice and emotional labor: The role of perspective taking, anger, and emotional regulation. Journal of Management, 34(5), 903–924.

Rupp, D. E., & Spencer, S. (2006). When customers lash out: The effects of customer interactional injustice on emotional labor and the mediating role of discrete emotions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(4), 971–978.

Salancik, G. R., & Pfeffer, J. (1978). A social information processing approach to job attitudes and task design. Administrative Science Quarterly, 23, 224–253.

Salanova, M., Llorens, S., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2011). "Yes, I can, I feel good, and I just do it!" On gain cycles and spirals of efficacy beliefs, affect, and engagement. Applied Psychology: An International Journal of Psychology and Personality.

Review, 60(2), 255–285. doi: 10.1111/j.1464-0597.2010.00435.x

Schmeichel, B. J., Vohs, K. D., & Baumeister, R. F. (2003). Intellectual performance and ego depletion: Role of the self in logical reasoning and other information processing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 33–46.

Schneider, B. (1994). HRM – A service perspective: Towards a customer-focused HRM. International Journal of Service Industry Management, 5(1), 64–76.

Schneider, B., & Bowen, D. E. (1985). Employee and customer perceptions of service in banks: Replication and extension. Journal of Applied Psychology, 70, 423–433.

Schneider, B., & Bowen, D. E. (1993). The service organization: Human resources management is crucial. Organizational Dynamics, 21(4), 39–52.

Schneider, B., Ehrhart, M. G., Mayer, D. M., Saltz, J. L., & Niles-Jolly, K. (2005). Understanding organization–customer links in service settings. Academy of Management Journal, 48(6), 1017–1032.

Schneider, B., Parkington, J. J., & Buxton, V. M. (1980). Employee and customer perceptions of service in banks. Administrative Science Quarterly, 25, 252–267.

Schoefer, K., & Ennew, C. (2005). The impact of perceived justice on consumers' emotional responses to service complaint experiences. Journal of Services Marketing, 19(5), 261–270. doi:10.1108/08876040510609880

Schriesheim, C. A., Castro, S. L., Zhou, X., & Yammarino, F. J. (2001). The folly of theorizing “A” but testing “B”: A selective level-of-analysis review of the field and detailed Leader–Member Exchange illustration. The Leadership Quarterly, 12, 515–551.

Singh, J. (1990). Voice, exit, and negative word-of-mouth behaviors: An investigation across three service categories. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 18(1), 1–15. doi:10.1007/BF02729758

Singh, J. (2000). Performance productivity and quality of frontline employees in service organizations. Journal of Marketing, 64(2), 15–34.

Singh, J., & Pandya, S. (1991). Exploring the effects of consumers' dissatisfaction level on complaint behaviours. European Journal of Marketing, 25(9), 7–21.

Skarlicki, D. P., van Jaarsveld, D. D., & Walker, D. D. (2008). Getting even for customer mistreatment: The role of moral identity in the relationship between customer interpersonal injustice and employee sabotage. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(6), 1335–1347. doi: 10.1037/a0012704

Sliter, M., Jex, S., Wolford, K., & McInerney, J. (2010). How rude! Emotional labor as a mediator between customer incivility and employee outcomes. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 15(4), 468–481.

Spector, P. E., Fox, S., & van Katwyk, P. T. (1999). The role of negative affectivity in employee reactions to job characteristics: Bias effect or substantive effect. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 72, 205–218.

Spencer, S., & Rupp, D. E. (2009). Angry, guilty, and conflicted: Injustice toward coworkers' heightens emotional labor through cognitive and emotional mechanisms. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(2), 429–444.

Susskind, A. M., Kacmar, K. M., & Borchgrevink, C. P. (2003). Customer service providers' attitudes relating to customer service and customer satisfaction in the customer-server exchange. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88, 179–187.

Tan, H. H., Foo, M. D., & Kwek, M. H. (2004). The effects of customer personality traits on the display of positive emotions. Academy of Management Journal, 47, 287–296.

Tsai, W. C. (2001). Determinants and consequences of employee displayed positive emotions. Journal of Management, 27, 497–512.

van Dolen, W., de Ruyter, K., & Lemmink, J. (2004). An empirical assessment of the influence of customer emotions and contact employee performance on encounter and relationship satisfaction. Journal of Business Research, 57, 437–444.

van Jaarsveld, D. D., Walker, D. D., & Skarlicki, D. P. (2010). The role of job demands and emotional exhaustion in the relationship between customer

and employee incivility. Journal of Management, 36(6), 1486–1504.

Van't Wout, M., Chang, L. J., & Sanfey, A. G. (2010). The influence of emotion regulation on social interactive decision-making. Emotion, 10(6), 815–821.

Wan, L. C., Chan, E. K. Y., & Su, L. (2011). When will customers care about service failures that happened to strangers? The role of personal similarity and regulatory focus and its implication on service evaluation. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 30, 213–220.

Wang, M., Liao, H., Zhan, Y., & Shi, J. (2011). Daily customer mistreatment and employee sabotage against customers. Academy of Management Journal, 54(2), 312–334.

Walsh, G. (2011). Unfriendly customers as a social stressor: An indirect antecedent of service employees' quitting intention. European Management Journal, 29(1), 67–78. doi:10.1016/j.emj.2010.08.001

Wegge, J., Vogt, J., & Wecking, C. (2007). Customer-induced stress in call centre work: A comparison of audio- and videoconference. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 80(4), 693–712. doi: 10.1348/096317906X164927

Weiss, H. M., & Cropanzano, R. (1996). Affective events theory: A theoretical discussion of the structure, causes and consequences of affective experiences at work. In B. M. Staw & L. L. Cummings (Eds.), Research in organizational behavior (Vol. 18 [S 1], pp. 1–74). Greenwich, CT: Elsevier Science/JAI Press.

Yang, J., & Diefendorff, J. M. (2009). The relations of daily counterproductive workplace behavior with emotions, situational antecedents, and personality moderators: A diary study in Hong Kong. Personnel Psychology, 62, 259–295.

Zeelenberg, M., & Pieters, R. (2004). Beyond valence in customer dissatisfaction: A review and new findings on behavioral responses to regret and disappointment in failed services. Journal of Business Research, 57(4), 445–455. doi:10.1016/S0148-2963(02)00278-3

Zeithaml, V. A. (2000). Service quality, profitability, and the economic worth of customers: What we know and what we need to learn. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 28(1), 67–85. doi: 10.1177/0092070300281007

Zeithaml, V. A., Parasuraman, A., & Berry, L. L. (1985). Problems and strategies in services marketing. Journal of Marketing, 49, 33–46.

Zimmermann, B. K., Dormann, C., & Dollard, M. F. (2011). On the positive aspects of customers: Customer-initiated support and affective crossover in employee-customer dyads. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 20(1), 31–57.