Journal of Northeastern University(Social Science) ›› 2020, Vol. 22 ›› Issue (2): 41-49.DOI: 10.15936/j.cnki.1008-3758.2020.02.006

• Economics and Management • Previous Articles     Next Articles

An Exploratory Study on Frontline Employees' Response Strategies to Customer Misbehavior

LIU Ru-ping1, ZHAO Man1, FAN Guang-wei2   

  1. (1. School of Business Administration, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110169, China; 2. School of Business Administration, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang 110016, China)
  • Received:2019-07-25 Revised:2019-07-25 Online:2020-03-25 Published:2020-04-02
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Abstract: The frontline employees' response strategies and their effects on customer misbehavior is analyzed by taking 212 incidents as the research object. The result shows that the response strategies of frontline employees to customer misbehavior fall into six categories: stopping, keeping silence, explaining, apologizing, quarreling and seeking help. When customer misbehavior is targeted at non-frontline employees (fellow customers, goods and environment), rather than keeping silence, stopping customer misbehavior of the frontline employees can better promote the evaluation of service quality, positive word of mouth and loyalty of the fellow customers. When customer misbehavior is targeted at front-line employees, fellow customers will perceive the highest quality of service when frontline employees apologize, though frontline employee explaining has the highest frequency. The highest positive word of mouth and loyalty exist when frontline employees seek help.

Key words: customer misbehavior, frontline service employee, service quality

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