Constructive Resistance in the Frontlines: How Frontline Employees’ Resistance to Customer Incivility Affects Customer Observers

Abstract

Frontline employees (FLEs) often face customer incivility—rude or demeaning remarks, verbal aggression, or hostile gestures. Although incivility from customers is rising at an alarming rate, most organizations refuse to act decisively to protect their FLEs and stop customer incivility. This research asserts that an organizational policy of ignoring and accepting incivility from customers is neither a wise business strategy nor has positive outcomes. In contrast, customer incivility should be handled promptly and decisively. Specifically, the authors present FLE Constructive Resistance (FLE CR) as a strategy to confront customer incivility. The authors conduct interviews with FLEs, develop a Constructive Resistance (CR) scale to fit the context of FLE–customer encounters, and test a conceptual model to examine the impact of CR by FLEs. The results suggest that customers who observe incivility perpetrated by fellow customers respond positively to FLE CR, including greater future purchase intention, greater positive word-of-mouth intention, and reduced future misbehavior intention. These effects are mediated by the observer’s perceived fairness of the FLE’s CR. Finally, the indirect effects of FLE’s CR on observer outcomes are more likely to manifest in customers with higher moral identity as well as newer customers.

Vulnerability on the frontline: systematic review and meta-analysis of frontline employee vulnerability

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How customer incivility affects organization citizenship behavior: roles of depersonalization, resilience, and caring climate

“…Given the positive relationship between customer incivility and resilience, organizations may consider strategies to promote positive customer interactions. This can involve customer service training, setting clear expectations for acceptable customer behavior and providing employees with autonomy to address incivility when it occurs (Kamran-Disfani et al , 2023; Zhu et al , 2019). This can be done by offering real-life examples of both acceptable and unacceptable customer behaviors to illustrate expectations.…”

Transformational leadership style and psychological safety to meaningful work: moderating role customer incivility

“…, 2023) and fostering commitment and resilience (i.e. Kamran-Disfani et al. , 2022; Morales-Solis et al.…”

“…Training and role rotation may help mitigate such uncivil behavior, enhancing employees' self-efficacy (Hur et al, 2022;Lages et al, 2023) and fostering commitment and resilience (i.e. Kamran-Disfani et al, 2022;Morales-Solis et al, 2022). Making hotel jobs meaningful and prestigious can also discourage employees from being affected by uncivil behavior (i.e.…”