Conflict-solving as a mediator between customer incivility and service performance

The customer incivility literature has primarily focused on emotional exhaustion and burnout as emotion-focused mediators that channel the effect of customer incivility. Drawing on conservation of resources (COR) theory, the current research proposes a new problem-solving-focused mediator, namely, conflict-solving behavior. The authors test the mediating role of conflict-solving behavior between customer incivility and customer service performance while controlling for emotional exhaustion and employee incivility as parallel mediation mechanisms. The results from three studies provide strong support for a negative relationship between customer incivility and conflict-solving behavior and for conflict-solving behavior as a full mediator between customer incivility and customer service performance. Furthermore, the negative effect of customer incivility on conflict-solving behavior is mitigated when customer service employees are promotion-focused and as investment in customer relationship building increases. The findings extend the scope and generalizability of customer incivility research from the business-to-customer to the business-to-business context. Managerial implications for employee training and hiring as well as the importance of cultivating customer relationships as a buffer to dampen the effect of customer incivility are discussed.

摘要

客户不文明行为的相关文献主要将情绪相关变量作为解释客户不文明行为的影响的中间变量，例如情绪衰竭和过度疲劳。本文借鉴资源保存理论（COR），提出了一种新的以问题为中心的中间变量，即冲突解决行为。作者测试了冲突解决作为影响在客户不文明和客户服务绩效之间的中间变量作用，同时控制了情绪衰竭和员工不文明作为平行中间变量。三项研究结果均有力地支持了客户不文明行为与冲突解决行为之间的负向关系，同时表明了冲突解决行为是客户不文明行为与客户服务绩效之间的完全中间变量。另外，当客户服务员工是专注促销的时候，以及对建立客户关系的投资增加的时候，客户不文明行为对于冲突解决的负面影响将会得到减少。研究结果将客户不文明行为研究的范围和普适性从企业对消费者（B2C）扩展到企业对企业（B2B）的商业环境。本研究在对管理者的启示部分也讨论了员工培训和招聘以及培养客户关系的重要性作为抑制客户不文明影响的缓冲作用。