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In this chapter, we summarize and build on the current state of the customer mistreatment literature in an effort to further future research on this topic. First, we detail the four primary conceptualizations of customer mistreatment. Second, we present a multilevel model of customer mistreatment, which distinguishes between the unfolding processes at the individual employee level and the service encounter level. In particular, we consider the antecedents and outcomes unique to each level of analysis as well as mediators and moderators. Finally, we discuss important methodological concerns and recommendations for future research.

Drawing on affect-based mechanisms, this chapter describes two forms of customer mistreatment, aggressive and demanding mistreatment. Tests are conducted of their lagged effects in predicting within-person fluctuation of employees’ negative mood, as well as the moderating roles of employees’ emotion regulation after work (i.e., rumination and social sharing). 1,185 daily surveys were collected from 149 Chinese customer service representatives from a call center for eight weekdays. Results supported the main effects of both forms of customer mistreatment and partly supported the moderating roles of rumination in strengthening the impacts of customer mistreatment. Implications and limitations are discussed.

Although service researchers have long suggested that customer mistreatment adversely impacts service employees' outcomes, statistical integration of current empirical findings has been lacking. This meta-analysis aims to review and statistically synthesize the state of research on the relationship between customer mistreatment and service employees' affective, attitudinal and behavioral outcomes.

The authors included 221 effect sizes of 135 independent samples from 119 primary studies (N = 47,964). The authors used a meta-analytic approach to quantitatively review the relationship between customer mistreatment and service employees' affective, attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. Meta-analysis structural equation modeling was used to explore the mediation mechanism of service employees' affective outcomes on the relationships between customer mistreatment and employees' attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. Meta-regression was applied to explore the impact of contextual-level moderators (i.e. service provider type and service delivery mode) on these relationships. Furthermore, we compared the effects of customer mistreatment with the effects of other organizational-related factors on some commonly measured employee outcomes.

The results show that customer mistreatment has a significant negative impact on service employees' affective outcomes (i.e. negative emotions), attitudinal outcomes (i.e. job satisfaction, organizational commitment, work engagement and turnover intention) and behavioral outcomes (i.e. job performance, surface acting and emotional labor). Additionally, service employees' negative emotions mediate the association between customer mistreatment and employees' job satisfaction, turnover intention, surface acting and emotional labor. Furthermore, the relationships between customer mistreatment and service employees' negative emotions and job performance are influenced by a contextual-level moderator (i.e. service delivery mode).

The authors contribute to the literature by providing robust meta-analytic estimates of the effects of customer mistreatment on a variety of service employees' affective, attitudinal and behavioral outcomes, as well as the different magnitudes of the effect sizes between customer mistreatment and other job-related and personality-related factors by quantifying the true variability of the effect sizes. The authors draw on current theories underpinning customer mistreatment to test a theoretical model of the mediation mechanism of service employees' affective outcomes (i.e. service employees' negative emotions) on the relationships between customer mistreatment and employees' attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. The authors explore the effects of two contextual-level factors (i.e. service provider types and service delivery mode) related to the service delivery context that may account for the variability of effect sizes across empirical studies.

Despite extensive research on the detrimental work-related impact of customer mistreatment, there has been limited investigation into the outcomes that encompass both positive and negative connotations (i.e. unethical pro-organizational behavior [UPB]). This study aims to test whether, how and when daily customer mistreatment leads to hospitality employees’ daily UPB.

This study conducted a two-phase daily diary study. In the first phase, participants completed measures of their sense of power and provided demographic information. During the subsequent two-week period, participants completed questionnaires twice daily. The analysis included data from 87 hospitality employees, with 781 surveys remaining. This study performed multilevel analyses using Monte–Carlo simulations.

This study revealed that hospitality employees experiencing daily customer mistreatment exhibited heightened perceptions of status threats, resulting in increased daily UPB. The moderating effects of employees’ sense of power were found to be significant in both direct and indirect relationships.

Hospitality managers should recognize that customer mistreatment can threaten employees’ social status and result in daily UPB. To protect employees, implementing daily training programs is essential. Moreover, hotels and managers should provide HR management/recognition programs and empowerment initiatives to boost employees’ sense of power and counteract the harmful effects of customer mistreatment on their status.

This study makes contributions to the existing literature on customer mistreatment by establishing a positive relationship between daily customer mistreatment and daily UPB through the mechanism of status threat. Furthermore, thise study highlights the importance of enhancing hospitality employees’ sense of power as a protective factor against the negative consequences of customer mistreatment.

Despite workplace cheating behavior is common and costly, little research has explored its antecedents from customers' perspective. The current study aims to investigate the indirect mechanisms between customer mistreatment and cheating behavior, and exam the moderated role of traditionality.

Drawing on conservation of resources theory, the authors examine how customer mistreatment affects workplace cheating behavior. They test their hypotheses using a time-lagged field study of 183 employees.

The results show that customer mistreatment is positively related to interpersonal conflict with customers, which positively affects workplace cheating behavior. Traditionality moderates the indirect effect of customer mistreatment on workplace cheating behavior.

This study calls for researchers' attention to exploring the antecedents of workplace cheating behavior from customers' perspective, and first provides empirical evidence on the relationship between customer mistreatment and workplace cheating behavior, which has never been examined.

Drawing on the conservation of resource theory and emotional contagion perspective, this study aims to propose that customer mistreatment has an indirect effect on subsequent customer mistreatment by triggering high levels of surface acting. In other words, there is a vicious circle formed as a result of customer mistreatment and surface acting. This paper further argues that emotional regulation and conscientiousness are effective in breaking this vicious circle.

An experience sampling study was conducted on 97 frontline service employees in a hotel chain’s restaurants in China, with two daily surveys for ten consecutive days. Multilevel path analyses were used to test the hypotheses.

The results indicate that employees experiencing customer mistreatment in the morning would adopt the surface acting strategy more frequently in the afternoon, which in turn induces more customer mistreatment in the afternoon. Further, this indirect effect can be mitigated by high (versus low) levels of emotional regulation and conscientiousness.

Recently, there has been growing recognition of the vital links between customer mistreatment and negative employee outcomes. However, these studies have failed to consider the carryover effect of customer mistreatment. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first pioneer study on whether and how customer mistreatment can affect subsequent instances of customer mistreatment, thereby offering a more comprehensive understanding of the consequences of customer mistreatment.

Drawing from self-regulation theories, this study aims to present a model linking customer mistreatment to hotel employees’ displaced workplace deviance via self-regulatory depletion, with disposition-based mindfulness as a first‐stage moderator.

The authors conducted a multisource, multiwave investigation with 245 focal–coworker dyads at 14 full-service hotels in southern China. Descriptive statistics, confirmatory factor analysis and regression analysis were performed.

The results demonstrated the mediating role of self-regulatory depletion in provoking hotel employees’ displaced deviant reactions to customer mistreatment. Additionally, employees with high trait mindfulness are less vulnerable to self-regulatory depletion and, thus, less likely to exhibit displaced workplace deviance.

This study enables hospitality administrators to understand that organizations and their employees, whether directly mistreated by customers, are potential victims of such negative events. Hospitality organizations should enhance mindfulness-based interventions and provide more humane care for employees to maintain their self-regulatory abilities, thereby reducing displaced workplace deviance.

First, in contrast to studies focusing primarily on internal factors that trigger employees’ deviant responses, the research suggests that mistreatment by external customers is a potentially meaningful yet largely unexamined antecedent of workplace deviance. Second, this study moves beyond “self-gain” explanations, suggesting that employees display deviance not because of a malicious intent to harm the organization or its members but because they are incapable of controlling their undesirable behaviors. Third, the research highlights how mindfulness mitigates customer mistreatment and displaced workplace deviance relationships.

This study aims to assess a moderated-mediation model to account for the relationship between customer mistreatment and frontline hotel employees’ customer-focused voice, where their organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) served as a mediator and their felt trust (reliance and disclosure) by supervisors served as a moderator.

The data were collected through paper-based questionnaires in a cross-sectional survey, consisting of 319 valid supervisor-employee-paired responses from 33 international tourist hotels in Taiwan. Regression analyses were used for hypothesis testing.

OBSE mediates the negative effect of customer mistreatment on customer-focused voice. Employee felt reliance intensifies the negative impact of customer mistreatment on OBSE, and this interaction effect, in turn, reduces customer-focused voice through OBSE. The employee felt disclosure marginally significantly buffers the effect of customer mistreatment on OBSE.

Given the adverse effect of customer mistreatment on customer-focused voice through OBSE, hotels should strengthen employees’ service mindset and value their suggestions. The double-edged effects of felt trust suggest that managers should form a trusting relationship with their subordinates and reassure them that isolated incidents of customer mistreatment will not jeopardize their reputation.

This study integrated sociometer and self-consistency theories to examine OBSE as a psychological mechanism to explain the mistreatment-voice process. Besides assessing felt trust’s two-dimensional effects, this research is possibly the first attempt to examine felt trust as an enabling force or a threat to OBSE in the context of customer mistreatment.

This chapter summarizes a meta-analysis of 72 studies (N= 20,701) that link customer mistreatment (abusive, nasty, and rude behavior of customers toward employees) to psychological, attitudinal, and behavioral strains. Results showed that customer mistreatment related significantly to a variety of psychological and attitudinal strains (emotional exhaustion, emotional strain, job (dis)satisfaction, turnover intentions, perceived organizational support, and supervisor support) and behavioral strains (reduced customer service performance and counterproductive work behavior (CWB) directed toward organizations and customers). These results were similar to those found with general mistreatment, suggesting that mistreatment by organizational outsiders might have similar effects to mistreatment from organizational insiders. These results suggest a clear association of mistreatment with strains, but recent work is discussed that questions the typical assumption that mistreatment leads to CWB rather than the reverse.

This study aims to examine the joint impact of customer mistreatment (external stressor) and team performance pressure (internal stressor) on employees’ proactive customer service performance (PCSP) using the stressor-emotion model.

The sample consisted of 220 employees and 54 branch leaders from a large restaurant chain in China. This study conducted a multi-time and multi-source design study using Mplus 7.4 to examine the hypotheses.

Customer mistreatment has a positive effect on employees’ emotional exhaustion, which further reduces PCSP. Team performance pressure strengthens the dysfunctional effect of customer mistreatment on emotional exhaustion, whereas leaders’ positive affective presence mitigates the negative relationship between emotional exhaustion and PCSP.

This study investigates how internal and external stressors jointly affect employees’ PCSP. Thus, it provides a comprehensive perspective of employee stress management and active service management for organization managers.

基于压力源-情绪模型, 本研究旨在了解客户不当对待（外部压力源）和团队绩效压力（内部压力源）如何共同影响员工的主动对客服务绩效。

我们的样本来自中国一家大型连锁餐厅的220名员工和54名分店负责人。我们进行了多时间和多来源设计, 并采用Mplus 7.4检验所有假设。

客户不当对待会导致员工情绪衰竭, 进而降低主动对客服务绩效。团队绩效压力加强了客户不当对待对员工情绪衰竭的消极影响,而领导者积极情感体现可以减弱员工情绪衰竭对其员工主动对客服务绩效的负面影响。

本文的贡献是全面探讨内部和外部压力源如何共同影响员工的主动对客服务绩效, 从而为组织管理者提供一个更全面的员工压力管理和主动服务管理的视角。

Este estudio examina el impacto conjunto de los abusos de los clientez (estresor externo) y la presión sobre el rendimiento del equipo (estresor interno) en el rendimiento proactivo del servicio al cliente (PCSP) de los empleados utilizando el modelo estresor-emoción.

Nuestra muestra está formada por 220 empleados y 54 jefes de establecimientos pertenecientes a una gran cadena de restaurantes de China. Realizamos un diseño multitemporal y multifuente con Mplus 7.4 para examinar todas las hipótesis.

Los abusos de los clientes tienen un efecto positivo sobre el agotamiento emocional de los empleados, lo que reduce aún más la PCSP. La presión sobre el rendimiento del equipo refuerza el efecto disfuncional del abuso de los clientes sobre el agotamiento emocional, mientras que la presencia afectiva positiva de los líderes mitiga la relación negativa entre el agotamiento emocional y la PCSP.

Este artículo contribuye a investigar cómo los factores estresantes internos y externos afectan conjuntamente a la PCSP de los empleados. Proporciona una perspectiva más completa de la gestión del estrés de los empleados y de la gestión activa de los servicios para los directivos de las organizaciones.