Walk A Mile in Their Shoes: Perspective-Taking as an Intervention for Difficult Customer Interactions

Abstract

An important gap in the customer mistreatment literature is understanding how employees’ affective reactions can be modified to decrease negative affective reactions. The current study draws from affective events theory to examine how customer-focused perspective-taking, or employees taking the customer’s point of view, can modify employees’ affective reactions to customer mistreatment. Withholding customer compensation was examined as an outcome of customer-focused perspective-taking, and anger and empathy were examined as mediators. A two-group (customer-focused perspective-taking: yes or no) experimental design examined the between-subjects effect of customer-focused perspective-taking among 128 frontline managers. The results indicate mediation of anger and empathy between perspective-taking and customer compensation, supporting customer-focused perspective-taking as an intervention to help employees maximize service delivery. The most important theoretical contribution of the article is showing that by interrupting the affective events theory process at a within-person level, affective reactions and episodic performance can be modified when reacting to customer mistreatment.

Keywords

emotional labor human resources perspective taking affective event theory

Introduction

Hospitality and service employees often encounter demanding, aggressive, and verbally abusive customers on a daily basis (Huang et al., 2018). Research is clear that service employees often deal with customers who can be rude and aggressive and that these interactions can have negative impacts on service employees. Unlike other industries, statements like “the customer is king” and “the customer is always right” fuel the power discrepancy between customers and service employees. These hospitality mantras result in an unequal power mechanism during customer interactions. Even during difficult customer interactions, employees are expected to go above and beyond for customers during service encounters to provide a positive service experience (Hur et al., 2015) and display expected expressions and emotions (L. Lee & Madera, 2019). Organizational display rules mandating how employees should show positive expressions and to serve customers with a positive attitude often result in employees smiling through rude, hostile, and abusive customer interactions (Mattila & Enz, 2002). This equation of empowered guests and employees having to show positive expressions, results in an implicit power imbalance between customers and employees (Rafaeli et al., 2006). The synergetic blend of hospitality display rules and the power imbalance between customers and employees require employees to exert more effort into solving guest complaints and service failures (Choi et al., 2014).

Research suggests that negative treatment by customers has negative effects on employees, such as decreased service performance (e.g., Choi et al., 2014; Groth & Grandey, 2012), increased customer sabotage or retaliation (e.g., Wang et al., 2011), and increased negative affect (e.g., Song et al., 2018; Wang et al., 2011). Given the centrality of employee–customer interactions in customer satisfaction, enhancing the human interaction between employees and customers, particularly with difficult customers, can be the difference between good and great customer service (Hocutt et al., 1997). In fact, many of the service quality and satisfaction dimensions rely on human interactions, yet organization training programs often focus on technical skills rather than possible interventions or training tools for employees. Therefore, the purpose of the current study is to examine how perspective-taking can influence affective reactions toward difficult customer interactions (i.e., negative affect and empathy) and critical employee performance outcomes.

The customer mistreatment literature consistently shows that employees who are treated negatively by customers not only feel more negative emotions but are also more likely to engage in retaliation or customer sabotage (e.g., Baranik et al., 2017; Mullen & Kelloway, 2013; Wang et al., 2011). Affective events theory (AET; Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) provides a theoretical framework linking customer mistreatment and customer service behaviors, such as retaliation against customers. According to AET, events at work result in affective reactions (e.g., emotions and moods) that influence work attitudes and behaviors. Consequently, shifting employee’s affective reactions during difficult service interactions could influence service performance. In the hospitality and service context, interactions with demanding, aggressive, and verbally abusive customers likewise result in employees experiencing discrete negative emotions such as anger (Rupp & Spencer, 2006). These emotions can then influence work attitudes and behaviors, such as indifference, apathy, or sabotage as well as withdrawal behaviors (Wang et al., 2011). Therefore, it is imperative to bridge the gap between employees’ negative affective responses to difficult and demanding customers and the organization’s ultimate goal of maximizing service delivery.

While much has been learned in how service employees react to demanding, aggressive, and verbally abusive customers, an important gap in this literature is understanding how employees’ affective reactions to negative customer treatment can be modified to decrease negative reactions. Service-level employees are not regularly trained to manage disgruntled customers (Hocutt et al., 1997; Van Vaerenbergh & Orsingher, 2016), and there is little empirical research examining how organizations and management can support employees during challenging interactions (Groth & Grandey, 2012). The current study draws on the AET framework to examine perspective-taking—imagining situations from another person’s point of view—as an intervention tactic. Perspective-taking can affect service performance by shifting employee’s negative affect during difficult service interactions. Specifically, the current study conceptualizes customer-focused perspective-taking as employees taking the customer’s point of view to understand customer behaviors and motivations. AET suggests that an intervention aimed at changing the direct affective reactions of negative work events (e.g., customer mistreatment) could help shape employee affective reactions, thereby improving their subsequent performance during difficult service interactions. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine how customer-focused perspective-taking influences employees’ affective reactions toward difficult customers, specifically with regard to two discrete affective reactions: anger and empathy.

There are several theoretical reasons for focusing on anger and empathy as affective outcomes of customer-focused perspective-taking. Anger is a natural emotional response to being yelled at, insulted, or disrespected, all of which are characteristic of customer mistreatment (Olson-Buchanan & Boswell, 2008; Wang et al., 2011). Furthermore, empathy is a crucial affective driver of service performance because expressing empathy toward customers can affect postfailure satisfaction (for a review, see Gelbrich & Roschk, 2011; Orsingher et al., 2010). However, empathy is not always a natural reaction, especially after experiencing negative customer treatment. Although past research has shown that engaging in perspective-taking leads to greater empathy toward a target group compared with those that did not (Batson et al., 2002; Longmire & Harrison, 2018; Madera et al., 2011), research has yet to link empathy to a customer mistreatment context. This is a glaring gap in the literature because the AET framework suggests that affective reactions can influence work performance.

To address this gap, this study examined customer compensation as an outcome of affective reactions (i.e., reduced anger and increased empathy) to customer mistreatment. Customer compensation is a frequently used service recovery strategy (Gelbrich & Roschk, 2011) that is often left to service workers’ discretion. Therefore, it is an ideal target to examine the influence of affective reactions. Using AET as a theoretical framework, this study examined the effect of customer-focused perspective-taking on customer compensation via the mediating effects of anger and empathy. By reducing anger and increasing empathy, customer service performance, such as customer compensation, can be more positively influenced through perspective-taking.

Literature Review

Affective Events Theory

AET suggests that an event at work elicits an immediate and almost instantaneous affective reaction that influences employee behavior (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) and illustrates an underlying mechanism for how the relationship between work events and affective states influence performance. Theorized to operate as a dual-level cognitive appraisal process, the first appraisal involves judging how relevant the work event is to an individual (Lam & Chen, 2012; L. Lee & Madera, 2019). This often involves subjectively assessing how a work event directly affects the individual, presumably with events proximal to the individual resulting in more intense affective states compared with distal events. The second appraisal assesses the consequences of the work event and results in state-dependent affective reactions and discrete emotions (Lam & Chen, 2012; L. Lee & Madera, 2019). For example, work events (i.e., customer mistreatment) elicit affective reactions and emotions (i.e., anger, sadness, stress) that shape work behaviors (i.e., emotional labor, service recovery performance) and work attitudes (i.e., job dissatisfaction).

Similarly, AET has also been construed as a within-person model for describing affective states as a reaction to events at work. Grounded in the notion that emotions influence and change performance-related behaviors, the first premise of AET is that within-person emotions are affective states and therefore subjected to change over time and that work events serve as antecedents to these emotional states. Although organization research suggests that providing stable working conditions for employees will help minimize the impact of work event and fluctuations in emotional states (Cropanzano et al., 2017), the hospitality industry is heavily rooted in human interactions that vary from interaction to interaction.

Second, AET emphasizes how affective states change at the within-person level to affect workplace behaviors and performance described as episodic performance (Beal et al., 2005). The term episodic performance was coined to understand how changes in affective states influence simultaneous performance and help explain how workplace events like customer mistreatment influence customer service performance (Cropanzano et al., 2017). Therefore, AET provides insight into the psychological and emotional mechanisms behind how customer mistreatment influences employee performance by influencing employees’ emotional states as well as suggests that changing or modifying emotional reactions could influence employee performance.

AET has been examined in the hospitality and tourism literature to examine constructs such as positive psychological capital (Jung & Yoon, 2015), mentoring and leader/team member support (Chang & Busser, 2017; Han et al., 2017), as well as emotional intelligence (Han et al., 2017), emotional contagion (Jung & Yoon, 2019), and emotional labor (Hur et al., 2013; Lam & Chen, 2012). Relying on AET as the premise behind how work situations influence employee emotional behaviors and attitudes, Jung and Yoon (2015) examined how employees improve performance through positive psychological capital and found support for positive psychological capital contributing to job satisfaction and subsequent organizational citizenship behavior.

Three studies investigated how leader and coworker relationships function to explain work attitudes and behaviors within the hospitality and tourism industry (Chang & Busser, 2017; Han et al., 2017; Jung & Yoon, 2019). Chang and Busser (2017) studied how mentoring influenced employees’ promotional attitudes. By examining mentoring and breached psychological contract as work events, the findings support AET and suggest that employee attitudes are indirectly shaped by work events through employee emotions. Second, leader’s emotional intelligence and support were tested as work events and were found to influence employee attitudes (i.e., job satisfaction) and behavior (i.e., service performance), reinforcing AET. The study found that leader’s emotional intelligence and support elicited affective reactions and affective behaviors among service employees (Han et al., 2017). Third, AET was used as a theoretical framework to study emotional contagion, burnout, and commitment, with work relationships (i.e., leaders and coworkers) moderating the relationship (Jung & Yoon, 2019).

Last, AET was also used to study emotional labor among service employees in two studies. First, Lam and Chen (2012) developed a model investigating how the work contexts can often predict work events and emotional states, as well as predict work attitudes (i.e., turnover) and behavior (i.e., service quality). By examining supervisory support as a work context, and interactional justice as a work event, the findings of this study support AET in that negative emotions within the work context influenced employee attitudes (i.e., job satisfaction) and behavior (i.e., emotional labor, service, voluntary turnover). Second, perceived organizational support was studied as a work event, along with emotional exhaustion (i.e., affective reaction) and affective behavior (emotional labor) to examine their influence on behaviors such as organizational commitment and turnover intention.

Thus, the AET literature from the hospitality industry has only focused on AET as a theoretical framework to explain how work events, particularly negative events, contributed to negative affect and subsequent work attitudes and behaviors. The current study advances this literature by examining how affective reactions to a negative event can be modified by shifting the perspective of employees. This article seeks to examine the relationship between work events, affective reactions, and work attitudes and behaviors and how affective reactions can be modified according to AET. In the case of a negative work event like customer mistreatment, the negative affect experienced by employees also influences their behavior. To change employee behavioral output and service performance, individuals must change how negative work events are processed affectively. Perspective-taking can affect this mechanism by reducing the immediate anger one feels during difficult interactions and increasing empathy, ultimately enhancing service performance. Guided by AET, the current proposed model (Figure 1) incorporates affective reactions—anger and empathy—as mediators of the effect of customer-focused perspective-taking on customer compensation.

Figure 1

Conceptual Model

Perspective-Taking

Perspective-taking is the active, cognitive process of imagining the world from another person’s point of view or imagining oneself in someone else’s shoes (Ku et al., 2015). By “seeing their side,” perspective-taking helps individuals understand the thoughts, needs, and motivations of a target, helping individuals navigate social situations (e.g., hospitality and service encounters). Perspective-taking has been used as a training tool for reducing negative attitudes and increasing positive behaviors toward stigmatized groups, target individuals, or out-group members (e.g., homeless people, addicts, people with HIV/AIDs; Batson et al., 2002; Madera, 2018a). Manipulations generally prompt individuals to consider “what the target is experiencing,” or “write about the target in the first person”, which are then compared against a neutral subject or conditions where participants were not given explicit directions (Ku et al., 2015). Following the perspective-taking manipulation, attitudes and beliefs about the target or target group are measured. Results from the literature demonstrate decreased negative emotions and attitudes as well as more positive attitudes and beliefs toward the target group from those who engaged in perspective-taking when compared with those who did not take the perspective of the target (Madera, 2018a; Todd & Galinsky, 2014). By increasing liking and psychological closeness, helping intentions, and positive emotions (Ku et al., 2015), and by decreasing prejudice, stereotyping, and discriminatory views (Madera, 2018b), perspective-taking helps individuals build and preserve social bonds.

The psychological mechanism allowing individuals to process negative emotions without experiencing additional negative affect through perspective-taking is known as the hot/cool emotional processing (Kross et al., 2005). The hot/cool emotional processing of perspective-taking enables “cool,” reflective emotional processing, focusing on the experience without activating or increasing “hot,” reflexive negative affect. According to the hot/cool systems model (Metcalfe & Mischel, 1999), stimuli (e.g., customer mistreatment) processed as “hot” are linked to automatic defensive behaviors like blaming and avoidance. On the other hand, “cool” processing enables contemplative emotional processing, counteracting and inhibiting the negative, reflexive responses of “hot” processing. Therefore, engaging in “cool” emotional processing could prevent negative rumination-like processing of work events and, in turn, positively influence service performance.

One unexplored perspective-taking manipulation is imagining oneself as a customer in a service context rather than as a member of a stigmatized group. By imagining oneself as a customer in a service context, affective responses and reactions (i.e., negative affect) could lead to positive outcomes (i.e., improved customer service) during an actual service interaction. Perspective-taking operates by reducing negative experiences and increasing positive outcomes (Madera, 2018b). The positive findings of the perspective-taking literature are therefore hypothesized to apply to a service setting to influence the negative outcomes of difficult customer encounters. The proposed mechanism of customer-focused perspective-taking incorporates traditional perspective-taking manipulations—focusing away from the negative treatment to influence affective reactions, anger and empathy, toward a customer.

Anger

The customer mistreatment literature suggests that anger is an immediate response to experiencing negative customer treatment (Song et al., 2018). Moreover, according to AET, anger can lead to emotion-driven behaviors like withholding service (i.e., customer compensation; Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). Olson-Buchanan and Boswell (2008) suggest that perceived mistreatment spirals into negative responses. In the case of customer mistreatment (e.g., verbal abuse, insults, yelling), employees often experience anger as a response to negative customer stimuli (Mullen & Kelloway, 2013). Furthermore, negative exchange spiral theory (Groth & Grandey, 2012) assumes that the underlying cause of the negative spiral is (a) a lack of understanding of other parties’ situations and (b) an unwillingness to change behaviors. Perspective-taking can abate negative spiraling by helping employees understand the customers’ point of view (Todd & Galinsky, 2014).

In this study, customer-focused perspective-taking is hypothesized to help employees tap into cool, reflective emotion processing rather than hot, reflexive processing. This allows employees to deescalate negative emotions as well as process emotions in a cool manner, preventing rumination and perpetuation of negative emotions. Additionally, experiencing and ruminating about negative treatment can further increase negative emotions. Concentrating on, focusing on, and recalling negative feelings has been found to perpetuate and prolong negative emotions and affect (Kross et al., 2005). Customer-focused perspective-taking can divert attention away from the anger employees experience as a result of negative customer treatment and potentially change employee behavior toward the customer. Thus, perspective-taking of customers is hypothesized to reduce participants’ anger.

Hypothesis 1₀: Customer-focused perspective-taking will not decrease employee anger.

Hypothesis 1: Customer-focused perspective-taking will decrease employee anger.

Empathy

Empathy is conceptualized as trait and state empathy (Madera et al., 2011). Unlike trait empathy, which is generally a more constant disposition, state empathy is an emotional response elicited by an event (De Vignemont & Singer, 2006). Consequently, state empathy has been examined as an outcome of perspective-taking manipulations to help elicit and increase positive attitudes and helping behavior toward a target (Batson et al., 2002).

Traditional perspective-taking manipulations involve asking people to imagine themselves in the shoes or life of a target individual resulting in more positive attitudes toward the target (Madera, 2018b). The attentional focus model suggests when perspective-taking subjects put themselves in someone else’s shoes, the cognitive process of thinking about the misfortunes of someone else will redirect attention away from the subject and toward the individual they are thinking about (Carlson & Miller, 1987; Kamins et al., 1991), thereby increasing empathy toward the target of perspective-taking. Therefore, customer-focused perspective-taking is hypothesized to increase empathy toward the customer.

Hypothesis 2₀: Customer-focused perspective-taking will not increase employee empathy.

Hypothesis 2: Customer-focused perspective-taking will increase employee empathy.

Customer Compensation as an Outcome

Customer compensation encompasses monetary reparations awarded to decrease service failure dissatisfaction. Common forms of compensation include product substitutions, discounts, or replacements (Fu et al., 2015). Customer compensation is often left to the discretion of employees, and negative treatment from customers could influence employees’ use or withholding of compensation. Furthermore, negative treatment from difficult, rude, or condescending customers can evoke negative emotions, such as anger, within employees, and retaliating against customers is one coping mechanism associated with anger in this scenario (Groth & Grandey, 2012). In fact, anger has been linked to workplace deviance and retaliation (Judge et al., 2006). Specifically, service sabotage is a form of employee revenge or retaliation where an employee willingly disrupts a service encounter to negatively affect the service provided to customers. Sabotage can be relatively benign, such as intentionally ignoring or taking longer to complete a service, or severe, such as deliberately overcharging, stealing from, or engaging in verbal altercations with customers. Engaging in service sabotage can not only magnify the negative consequences of service failures but also influence a customer’s perception of service quality and satisfaction (e.g., Orsingher et al., 2010). However, a relatively unexplored form of sabotage is how employees withhold compensation. Previous literature suggests further investigation into this relationship and mechanism (Wang et al., 2011); therefore, this study aims to examine a potential intervention to reduce the likelihood that employees withhold services in response to negative customer treatment.

The attentional focus model (Carlson & Miller, 1987) supports a mediating relationship between perspective-taking and helping behaviors, such as customer compensation. Through perspective-taking, the attentional focus model suggests that when individuals experience negative emotions and engage in perspective-taking, their attention is focused on another person’s negative experience rather than their own (Carlson & Miller, 1987). This shift in their focus helps mediate the relationship of a negative event and helping behavior by decreasing negative reactions toward that event (Kamins et al., 1991). Additionally, Groth and Grandey (2012) suggested that the negative affect linked to negative customer encounters often hastens retaliation efforts so an intervention designed to reduce negative affect could decelerate retaliatory attempts. Therefore, it is hypothesized that through the mediating effect of reduced anger, customer-focused perspective-taking will increase the use of customer compensation as a service recovery tool rather than withholding and refusing to offer compensation.

Additionally, focusing on someone else’s misfortune taps into the empathy–altruistic motivational mediation process. Carlson and Miller (1987) suggest that merely thinking about someone else elicits empathy and helping behaviors toward that person. Subsequently, the empathic response should increase helping intentions and behaviors compared with those who do not engage in perspective-taking (Kamins et al., 1991). Therefore, it is hypothesized that customer-focused perspective-taking will (a) reduce anger and (b) increase empathy, subsequently increasing the likelihood that an employee will use customer compensation.

Hypothesis 3₀: Anger will not mediate the effect of customer-focused perspective-taking on customer compensation.

Hypothesis 3: Anger will mediate the effect of customer-focused perspective-taking on customer compensation.

Hypothesis 4₀: Empathy will not mediate the effect of customer-focused perspective-taking on customer compensation.

Hypothesis 4: Empathy will mediate the effect of customer-focused perspective-taking on customer compensation.

Method

Sample

An experiment was conducted with 139 frontline hotel managers who were recruited from a regional professional hotel association training program in the southern region of the United States; 128 complete responses were collected from the managers (response rate = 93%; males = 34.9%; females = 61.1%). The average age of the participants was 31.30 (SD = 9.11). Additionally, 49.3% worked in full-service properties (49.3%), 19.0% worked in luxury hotels/resorts, and 22.2% worked in limited-service hotels for an average of 6.13 years (SD = 5.57 years). The managers identified themselves as 34.9% Caucasian, 17.5% African American, 37.3% Latino/a, 3.2% Asian American, 1.6% Native American, and 1.6% as “other.” Although, the majority of the literature reviewed used frontline employees as samples, in the hotel sector, frontline hotel managers are often responsible for dealing with complaining customers, service failures, and problem-solving, and have authority to distribute service recovery tools, such as customer compensation. Not only are managers authorized and are in charge of compensation, but line level employees often turn to managers for assistance with customer mistreatment and service failure issues. Therefore, hospitality managers are the ideal sample for this study.

In fact, the literature suggests that hotels commonly have policies and procedures that require customers contact employees to seek their managers to address service failures (Boshoff & Allen, 2000).

Design and Procedure

A two-group (customer-focused perspective-taking: yes or no) between-subjects experimental design was used to examine the relationships between customer-focused perspective-taking on one hand, and anger, empathy, and customer compensation on the other. The researchers approached managers prior to a training session to complete the experiment, described as a “role-playing training exercise” to prevent priming participants on the purpose of the experiment. They were informed the “role-playing training exercise” would be used in a discussion to encourage completion. After consenting to the study, participants read a “role-playing scenario” describing a service encounter between a front desk employee and a customer where the customer was given the incorrect room and the customer yells at the front desk employee.

The independent variable (customer-focused perspective-taking: yes or no) was manipulated by having the participants randomly assigned to write a statement either taking the perspective of the customer (“yes” condition) or their own perspective (“no” condition). Participants in the “yes” condition were asked to “think about how you would feel if you were in the shoes of the customer” and “why a reasonable, nice person can react the way the customer did.” This manipulation forced participants to think and write reasons for the customer’s behavior. On the other hand, participants in the “no” condition were asked to “write how you would feel” as a hotel employee, encouraging them to take their own perspective. The manipulation is based on Ku et al.’s (2015) perspective-taking manipulations, after which participants completed a survey containing the outcome measures and demographic questions.

Measures

Anger

Anger was measured using six items from the Positive Affect and Negative Affect Scales (PANAS; Watson & Clark, 1999) as modified by Harmon-Jones et al. (2009). Participants responded on a 5-point scale (1 = very slightly or not at all; 5 = extremely) to indicate how they would feel in response to the customer. Example items include “angry,” “irritable,” and “hate.” The scale reliability was 0.89.

Empathy

Empathy was measured using a six-item scale (Oswald, 1996). Participants responded on a five-point scale (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree) to indicate how they would feel toward the customer. Example items include “I would feel concern for the customer,” and “I would feel sympathy for the customer.” The scale reliability was 0.91.

Customer Compensation

Customer compensation was measured using a six-item, five-point scale (1 = not at all likely; 5 = very likely) to determine if they would extend complimentary gifts to the guest in response to the service failure. Example items include “I would give this customer free wi-fi during the entire stay” and “I would give this customer free breakfast at the hotel restaurant.” Since there is no known measure of customer compensation, these measures were developed based on the most commonly used forms of compensation according to the literature (M. J. Lee et al., 2011). Participants were also asked to indicate the size of the discount they would extend to the customer for a future return: 0%, 5%, 15%, 20%, or 25%. The responses were standardized and averaged, and the scale reliability was 0.85.

Manipulation and Realism Checks

The perspective-taking manipulation was checked by visually examining written responses, asking participants to answer how the customer reacted, and determining if they wrote about being in the shoes of the customer or their own. This ensured participants followed directions and wrote statements from either the perspective of the customer (“yes” condition) or themselves (“no” condition). Realism was measured with a two-item scale developed by Dabholkar and Spaid (2012).

Pilot Study

A pilot study was conducted to verify the scenario results in anger and empathy and to test the customer-focused perspective-taking manipulation. A separate sample of 101 frontline hotel managers (average age = 31.17 years, SD = 8.25; 62.2% female, 36.3% male) were recruited from a different local hospitality association training seminar and randomly assigned to taking the customer’s perspective or their own. Participants reported the scenario was easy to imagine (M = 4.56, SD = 0.83) and realistic (M = 4.70, SD = 0.66). Participants were asked to write how they would feel and respond to the scenario. LIWC (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count), a text analysis software program, was used to analyze these statements for anger based on positive affect and negative affect words and word stems (Pennebaker et al., 2007). The results indicate participants taking the customer’s perspective used fewer anger-related words (2.82%, SD = 11.44) than participants in the control condition (16.39%; SD = 24.23%). Participants taking the customer’s perspective also reported more empathy toward the customer (M = 3.76; SD = 0.93) than those in the control condition (M = 3.38, SD = 1.07) using the same measure for the current study.

Results

Psychometric Analyses

As shown in Table 1, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with all three variables, the average variance extraction (AVE), and the reliabilities were examined. The composite construct reliability (CCR) values were greater than 0.70 and the AVEs were greater than the 0.50 threshold (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). Table 2 shows that the squared correlations of all the variables were lower than the AVEs, demonstrating adequate discriminant validity. The CFA demonstrated adequate fit: χ² = 188.61, df = 132, p < .05; CFI (comparative fit index) = 0.95; IFI (incremental fit index) = 0.95; RMSEA (root mean square error of approximation) = 0.06 (e.g., see Byrne, 2001). All factor loadings were greater than 0.50 (all loaded at p < .01). This model was compared with a single-factor model CFA, which showed poor fit: χ² = 553.77, df = 135, p < .05; CFI = 0.67; IFI = 0.67; RMSEA = 0.16.

Table 1

Factor Loadings, CCR, AVE

Factor Loadings		CCR	AVE
Anger		0.84	0.61
1	0.78
2	0.86
3	0.74
4	0.84
5	0.75
6	0.70
Empathy		0.91	0.63
1	0.73
2	0.76
3	0.82
4	0.89
5	0.83
6	0.73
Customer compensation		0.85	0.50
1	0.78
2	0.75
3	0.74
4	0.72
5	0.59
6	0.65

Note: CCR = composite construct reliability; AVE = average variance extracted.

Table 2

Correlations and Squared Correlations

Variable	M	SD	Alpha	AVE	1	2	3
1. Anger	2.01	0.93	0.89	0.61	—	0.28	0.16
2. Empathy	3.24	0.99	0.90	0.63	−0.53^*	—	0.29
3. Customer compensation	—	—	0.85	0.50	−0.40^*	0.54^*	—

Note: Customer compensation is z-scored. Correlations are shown in the bottom, left side. Squared correlations are shown in the top, right side. M = mean; SD = standard deviation; AVE = average variance extraction.

p < .01.

As the manipulation check, a visual inspection of the perspective-taking written statements showed all participants wrote from the appropriate perspective. The two items developed by Dabholkar and Spaid (2012) to capture the realism of the scenarios both showed high means (out of a 5-point Likert-type scale): “It was easy imagining myself in the role play scenario” (M = 4.46, SD = 0.89) and “The role play scenario was realistic” (M = 4.76, SD = 0.47), indicating “agree” to “strongly agree” for these statements.

Test of Hypotheses

To test Hypotheses 1 and 2, a t test was used to examine group differences based on the customer-focused perspective-taking manipulation. For Hypothesis 1, customer-focused perspective-taking led to less anger (M = 1.57; SD = 0.57) compared with not taking the customer’s perspective (M = 2.40, SD = 1.02); t(123) = 5.55, p = .000), supporting Hypothesis 1. For Hypothesis 2, customer-focused perspective-taking led to more empathy (M = 3.53, SD = 0.80) compared with not taking the customer’s perspective (M = 2.95; SD = 1.09; t(126) = −3.40, p = .001), supporting Hypothesis 2. Both hypotheses were also examined using Hayes’s (2017) PROCESS macro for SPSS. Customer-focused perspective-taking led to less anger compared with not taking the customer’s perspective (β = −0.84; SE = 0.15; CI_.95 = −1.14, −0.54), supporting Hypothesis 1. Customer-focused perspective-taking led to more empathy compared with not taking the customer’s perspective (β = 0.57; SE = 0.17; CI_.95 = 0.23, 0.91), supporting Hypothesis 2. The null hypotheses for Hypotheses 1 and 2 were not supported.

Hayes’s (2017) PROCESS macro for SPSS was used to test Hypotheses 3 and 4, which provide evidence of significant indirect effects when the bootstrapping confidence intervals (CI) do not include zero (Table 3). Specifically, two models (PROCESS Model 4) examined the mediating effects of anger and empathy. The first mediation model (with anger as a mediator) showed that the direct effect of customer-focused perspective-taking on customer compensation was not significant (β = 0.23; SE = 0.14; CI_.95 = −0.05, 0.51), but this effect was mediated through decreased anger (β = 0.22; SE = 0.08; CI_.95 = 0.07, 0.41). The second mediation model (with empathy as the mediator) showed that the direct effect of customer-focused perspective-taking on customer compensation was significant (β = 0.23; SE = 0.11; CI_.95 = 0.002, 0.46), and this effect was mediated through increased empathy (β = 0.22; SE = 0.08; CI_.95 = 0.07, 0.41).

Table 3

Mediation Models

Direct Effects	Coefficient	SE	T	p	Model R²
Anger as outcome
Customer-focused perspective-taking	−0.84	0.15	−5.58	0.00	0.20**
Empathy as outcome
Customer-focused perspective-taking	0.57	0.17	3.33	0.001	0.29**
Indirect effects		Effect	Boot SE	Boot LLCI	Boot ULCI
CPT → Anger → Customer compensation		0.23	0.09	0.08	0.41
CPT → Empathy → Customer compensation		0.22	0.08	0.08	0.39
Parallel Mediation Model
Direct Effect	Coefficient	SE	t	p	Model R²
Anger affect as outcome					0.20**
CPT	−0.84	0.15	−5.58	0.00
Empathy as outcome					0.07*
CPT	0.54	0.17	3.08	0.00
Customer compensation as outcome					0.34**
Anger	−0.07	0.08	−0.96	0.34
Empathy	0.36	0.07	5.36	0.00
CPT	0.21	0.13	1.63	0.11
Indirect effects		Effect	Boot SE	Boot LLCI	Boot ULCI
Anger		0.06	0.07	−0.06	0.20
Empathy		0.19	0.07	0.06	0.35

Note: CPT = customer-focused perspective-taking (coded as 1 = no, 2 = yes); CC = customer compensation; LLCI = lower limit confidence interval; ULCI = upper limit confidence interval.

p < .05. ^**p < .005.

A third model was examined with both anger and empathy as parallel mediators. As shown in Table 3, customer-focused perspective-taking led to less anger and more empathy compared with not taking the customer’s perspective. The direct effect of customer-focused perspective-taking on customer compensation was not significant (β = 0.46; SE = 0.13; CI_.95 = −0.04, 0.46), and this effect was mediated through increased empathy (β = 0.19; SE = 0.07; CI_.95 = 0.06, 0.35) but not through decreased anger (β = 0.06; SE = 0.06; CI_.95 = −0.06, 0.19). This supports Hypothesis 4 but not Hypothesis 3. Consequently, the null hypothesis for Hypothesis 3 was supported while Hypothesis 4 was not supported.

Discussion

Extant literature suggests employees must be trained to deal with customer mistreatment, particularly during service failures. Previous research found that nearly 43% of unsatisfactory service encounters were attributed to frontline employees failing to handle the encounter properly and not the service failure itself (Bitner et al., 1990), suggesting that empowering employees with skills to navigate negative customer encounters can improve service performance. Hospitality and service employee reactions to dissatisfied customers or negative service encounters can improve the effectiveness of service recovery for organizations, and employees should be trained beyond the technical skills necessary to provide exceptional service in order to differentiate their organizations from the competition (Choi et al., 2014).

The results of this study suggest customer-focused perspective-taking reduced employees’ anger and amplified empathy toward customers compared with not engaging in customer-focused perspective-taking. However, while customer-focused perspective-taking decreased anger and increased empathy, decreased anger did not influence customer compensation; however, increased empathy did influence customer compensation. Consequently, the mediating effect of anger and empathy to customer compensation was only significant for empathy, suggesting customer-focused perspective-taking as an intervention for hospitality employees managing customer mistreatment operates through increased empathy to affect how employees exercise customer compensation to ultimately enhance customer satisfaction.

Investing in interpersonal training such as customer-focused perspective-taking can help hospitality and service organizations enhance employees’ ability to meet the complex service demands of today’s customer (Hur et al., 2015). Perspective-taking has been shown to help individuals understand the motives, thoughts, and needs of others, and it has been successfully deployed as a training tool in management settings (e.g., Longmire & Harrison, 2018). The findings support the existing literature, suggesting customer-focused perspective-taking helps employees navigate social situations by yielding positive changes in affective reactions.

Theoretical Implications

The current study has several theoretical implications. The most important theoretical contribution of the article is showing that by interrupting the AET process at a within-person level, affective reactions and episodic performance can be modified when reacting to customer mistreatment. Specifically, the findings of this study are consistent with AET (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) by showing that negative events or treatment at work often results in negative emotions. More important, the findings extend AET by demonstrating affective reactions can be changed or modified, subsequently changing work attitudes and behaviors. Previous hospitality research implemented AET to explain and predict the relationship between work events, affective reactions, and resulting work attitudes and behaviors. However, this study used AET as a theoretical framework to explain how affective reactions can be changed and modified in response to work events. The findings of this study build on AET by showing that engaging in customer-focused perspective-taking after negative treatment from the customer influences affective reactions to a negative event by decreasing anger and increasing empathy toward the customer. In other words, although hospitality employees will face customer mistreatment, customer-focused perspective-taking can change or modify their affective reactions, as well as their attitudes and behaviors.

Second, AET also suggests affective reactions from a work event influences workplace behaviors. For this study, customer compensation was conceptualized as a workplace behavior that is influenced by affective reactions. The managers were more likely to use customer compensation, rather than withhold it as retaliation, after customer-focused perspective-taking compared with the control condition, influencing service performance. Customer compensation is voluntary and discretionary; employees can choose to use compensation of their own volition, and they generally control how much compensation to extend. By changing and modifying the affective reactions of anger and empathy among managers that engaged in customer-focused perspective-taking, the findings of this study emphasize how affective reactions and episodic performance can be changed according to AET. Therefore, the effect of decreased anger and increased empathy on customer compensation highlights the importance of how emotions, mood, and affect influence work attitudes and behaviors, further supporting AET (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996).

Third, the literature focusing on AET often uses broad affect variables—negative and positive affect—while giving less attention to discrete emotions such as anger or empathy that reflect both negative and positive affect. The current article builds on the AET framework by applying AET to specific negative and positive emotions and testing the differences among discrete emotions in eliciting outcomes such as customer compensation. Thus, the current study not only examined novel emotions and behavioral outcomes but also highlights the importance of selecting discrete emotions that are theoretically related to the event, such as customer mistreatment, and outcomes, such as customer compensation. For example, the current study showed that distinct emotions may carry different weights for service outcomes, like customer compensation, in the context of customer mistreatment.

Specifically, the results of the current study’s parallel mediation model between customer-focused perspective-taking and customer compensation through anger and empathy suggests that discrete emotions work differently. While anger was not a significant mediator, empathy was a significant mediator. Perspective-taking literature suggests a strong relationship between perspective-taking and empathy (Longmire & Harrison, 2018), and empathy has a strong influence on behavioral and attitudinal outcomes (Todd & Galinsky, 2014). The underlying mediation relationship for customer compensation suggests customer-focused perspective-taking increases empathy, ultimately affecting how the managers used customer compensation. Empathy is often linked to altruistic behaviors (Oswald, 1996), and the current results showed that even after experiencing a negative event, such as customer mistreatment, customer-focused perspective-taking can increase empathy toward the instigator of the negative event, prompting helping behaviors (e.g., compensation). These findings support the AET framework and provide additional insight into how the mechanism of perspective-taking changes discrete emotions and subsequent outcomes.

Fourth, the findings of this study add to the perspective-taking literature by applying perspective-taking to a work context. Perspective-taking manipulations conventionally involved asking subjects to imagine themselves as a stigmatized group member (e.g., a homeless person, racial or ethnic minority; Madera, 2018b), but this study asked participants to imagine themselves as a customer, traveling for a long time, experiencing other service failures, or work and life circumstances that influenced their negative behavior. This manipulation decreased participants’ anger and increased their empathy, outcomes that echo perspective-taking literature. This study also measured a novel service context outcome (customer compensation), adding to the perspective-taking framework (Ku et al., 2015). Consequently, this is one of the few studies that examined perspective-taking in a work context, testing the customer’s perspective and work outcome variable of customer compensation.

Practical Implications

The current study provides a few practical implications for the hospitality industry. First, the results provide insight into how organizations and managers can positively influence episodic performance in instances of customer mistreatment. Customer-focused perspective-taking as an intervention provides tools to help employees during customer interactions that are not covered during technical skills training. While many department trainings focus and emphasize technical skills such as how to navigate the check-in system, operate a point-of-sales transaction, or issue refunds and credits, many trainings overlook the importance of providing employees the tools to resolve guest issues and manage customer mistreatment. In order for hospitality and service organizations to keep up with complex customer demands, organizations need a training intervention to help employees navigate the human and social interaction aspects of customer service. Based on the findings of this study, customer-focused perspective-taking is an effective training tool for helping employees manage their affective, attitudinal, and behavioral reactions to negative customer treatment. These trainings can help provide general guidance on customer-focused perspective-taking as an intervention tool during orientation, which can be further honed during department or employee development trainings. This way, organizations can provide new and rising employees with tools to manage negative service encounters (Choi et al., 2014).

Additionally, introducing customer-focused perspective-taking as a tool for employees to manage emotional states and performance during high-volume shifts is a preshift training intervention. Reinforcing and reminding employees of customer-focused perspective-taking during anticipated heavy or busy shifts could be an effective way to empower employees with the tools and skills to navigate difficult guests or negative service encounters, while maximizing service performance (Gelbrich & Roschk, 2011). For instance, emphasizing that a particular group that will be checking in is an international group that traveled more than 24 hours for a high-stress business meeting would provide perspective to employees that their check-in encounter is not the first hospitality touchpoint for the guests and that in addition to traveling for a long period of time, they could have experienced a turbulent flight, or their luggage could have been lost, or are under immense stress over the trip. Doing so can help employees take into consideration there are other factors in play that could be influencing customer mistreatment and that it may not be intentionally targeted toward the employee.

Last, managers are not only responsible for addressing and issuing customer compensation, but they also play a role in disseminating information to employees. Diversity and management training studies suggest the effectiveness of training interventions like perspective-taking depends on the strategic incorporation and application of perspective-taking as a training tool (Madera, 2018b). Therefore, it is critical for managers to integrate and implement customer-focused perspective-taking not only as a tool for frontline employees for themselves but also for modeling organization values and training employees.

Limitations and Future Studies

Although this study provides theoretical and practical contributions to literature, there are possible limitations and areas for future studies. First, a limitation that can be addressed in future research is that the reported means for both emotions (anger and empathy) were not at the high-end points of the measures. For example, the mean anger for the managers who did not engage in customer-focused perspective-taking was 2.40 (out of 5) versus 1.57 for the manager who did engage in customer-focused perspective-taking. These means suggest that although the managers rated the scenario high on realism and the manipulation check was effective, the managers did not report feeling a lot of anger when reading the scenario. There are two possible reasons. First, the means can reflect a limitation of self-report measures of emotions because using Likert-type ratings in self-report measures might not capture what they are really feeling (Lishner et al., 2008). The use of “extremely” as an anchor can possibly create a ceiling effect limiting the variation in emotion a participant is possibly feeling. A second possibility is that the managers might not feel these emotions as strongly when reading versus actually experiencing customer mistreatment in a face-to-face interaction (e.g., Kim & Jang, 2014). In other words, despite the strength of concluding causation with experimental methods, scenario-based experiments might not produce as strong emotional reactions as do face-to-face interactions. Future research, might address this limitation by using visual analogue scales that uses a large number of continuous rating values to reflect the intensity of emotions (Lishner et al., 2008) or using behavioral ratings of emotions by coders (e.g., Madera, 2016).

Second, the study sampled frontline managers from the southern United States. Future studies should sample a broader range of managers from multiple regions or from different countries to examine cultural differences, extending the implications and generalizability of this study.

Third, the cross-sectional nature of the experiment limits the findings of this study to one time point. Future studies could examine customer-focused perspective-taking longitudinally to capture fluctuations in discrete emotions, especially given that work events change from day to day. Additionally, a longitudinal design will allow for within-person analyses of emotional processing of work events. Since individuals process emotions differently, measuring and comparing the daily fluctuations that an individual experience can strengthen the potency of perspective-taking as a training intervention. Furthermore, a multilevel examination of perspective-taking as a training intervention could broaden the implications of this study. By examining the individual and organization level impacts of perspective-taking, future studies could examine unit-level mechanisms and provide a more comprehensive conceptualization of perspective-taking as a training tool for employees.

Conclusion

The current study demonstrates that customer-focused perspective-taking can influence customer compensation, through empathy, as a service performance tool during negative service encounters. The hospitality and service industry requires employees to provide appropriate affective and behavioral reactions and responses despite the increase in demanding and challenging customers and the lack of training focusing on managing disgruntled customers. This study examined customer-focused perspective-taking as an intervention to help employees manage their affective reactions and behaviors when dealing with negative treatment from customers. These results not only support perspective-taking as an effective training tool but also provide an understanding of the underlying mechanisms behind changing employee affect and behaviors during negative service encounters.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Lindsey Lee

Lindsey Lee, PhD (e-mail: lindsey.lee@temple.edu), is an assistant professor at the School of Sport, Tourism and Hospitality Management, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA.

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