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The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between perceived customer unfriendliness, emotional exhaustion, emotional dissonance and turnover intent using the stress–strain–outcome model in the call center industry in the Philippines. In addition, this paper also investigates the mediating effects of leader–member exchange (LMX) and emotional exhaustion.

This paper proposed a theoretical model hypothesizing the linkages between the abovementioned variables. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses using a data set from a sample of 605 Filipino call service representatives.

The results indicate that perceived customer unfriendliness as a stressor is a positive predictor of emotional exhaustion and emotional dissonance as strains. In turn, emotional exhaustion and emotional dissonance positively influence turnover intent. The results also reveal that LMX mediates the impact of perceived customer unfriendliness on emotional exhaustion. Further, the exhaustion variable mediates the effect of emotional dissonance on turnover intent.

The results suggest that contact with unfriendly customers has negative emotional implications and highlight the need for training or intervention programs to help service agents develop coping mechanisms. The results also imply that leader-initiated high-quality LMX could help attenuate perceived customer unfriendliness's impact on emotional exhaustion.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge,this paper is the first to examine and confirm the causal relationships of the proposed model’s variables using the stress–strain–outcome model.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of task interdependence and leader–member exchange, as social exchange variables, on affective commitment and turnover intent of new workers in an industry with high attrition rates. In addition, the paper examines the mediating effects of affective commitment.

The present study drew insights from the literature to formulate hypotheses that link the two social exchange variables on affective commitment and turnover intent. Through the utilization of the data collected from 441 call center agents working for eight call centers in the Philippines, the hypotheses were tested and analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results reveal that task interdependence and leader–member exchange are positive antecedents of affective commitment and negative predictors of turnover intent. Further analysis reveals that affective commitment fully mediates the effects of the two social exchange variables on turnover intent.

The results imply that call centers can help improve new workers' affective commitment and reduce their turnover intent through job designs that can facilitate high task interdependence. Furthermore, training team leaders or supervisors to develop leadership styles that are more focused on people and relationships may also increase the agents' commitment and reduce their quit intention.

This paper is the first to demonstrate that social exchange variables can also impact the affective commitment and turnover intent of new workers in an industry known to have heavy supervisorial monitoring, high demands in terms of work quotas and high turnover rates.