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When customers exhibit verbal aggression, employees pay cognitive costs
Anat Rafaeli1, Amir Erez, Shy Ravid
1Industrial Engineering and Management, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.
The Journal of Applied Psychology
|May 16, 2012
Summary
Customer verbal aggression negatively impacts employee cognitive function, reducing recall and memory. Empathy can mitigate these effects, improving task performance in customer service roles.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Organizational Behavior
- Human-Computer Interaction
Background:
- Customer service interactions can involve verbal aggression.
- Employee cognitive performance is crucial for effective customer service.
- The impact of customer aggression on employee cognition is not fully understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the effects of customer verbal aggression on employee cognitive performance.
- To explore potential moderators of this relationship, such as empathy.
- To examine the link between customer aggression and task performance.
Main Methods:
- Four experimental studies were conducted.
- Participants' cognitive functions (recall, recognition, working memory) were assessed.
- Task performance and the moderating role of perspective-taking were evaluated.
Main Results:
- Customer verbal aggression significantly impaired employee cognitive performance.
- Aggression reduced recall, recognition, and working memory.
- Perspective-taking attenuated the negative cognitive effects.
- Customer aggression negatively impacted task performance, especially from high-status customers.
Conclusions:
- Customer verbal aggression has detrimental effects on employee cognitive abilities and task performance.
- Empathy and perspective-taking are important buffers against the negative impacts of aggression.
- These findings have implications for managing customer service environments and employee well-being.
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