Employees in customer service industries frequently face hostility at work, with rude, demanding and, at times, threatening customers adding to the pressures of their jobs.
A recent study found that individual employees can use simple tactics to improve their work experience and manage the effects of difficult customer interactions, reports The Independent.
The research, co-authored by research psychologist William P Jimenez of the US Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, focused on taxi drivers, who often work on the front lines of customer interactions, put in long hours and perform significant emotional labour.
The researchers found that difficult interactions with customers can contribute to burnout, rule-breaking behaviour and employees’ decisions about whether to remain in their occupations.
As customer-facing employees become exhausted by their jobs, burnout can increase significantly, with some workers having little relief from difficult working conditions.
Employees in customer service industries are particularly vulnerable because their workforce is disproportionately made up of young people, women, racialised workers and people in precarious socioeconomic positions.
Compared with workers with greater social and economic power, they may have fewer alternative employment options and less ability to challenge unfair treatment. Because they depend on these jobs, they may feel compelled to tolerate conditions that more privileged workers could afford to leave.
The researchers said responsibility for addressing these problems rests with employers, who can use measures such as customer conduct policies and managerial support to reduce the frequency of such incidents.
However, the study examined whether employees could do something themselves when difficult interactions occur.
Focusing on positive experiences
The researchers adapted a “three good things” intervention, asking employees to reflect on three positive events from their workday and examining how the practice affected their behaviour at work.
People often remember negative experiences more readily, dwelling on things that went wrong or situations that upset them. Such incidents can produce stronger and more immediate physiological, cognitive and behavioural responses.
The researchers said this tendency can also be addressed by deliberately focusing on positive experiences.
Reflecting on positive aspects of the workday can help employees feel better about their jobs, potentially increasing job satisfaction and improving their performance.
The study found that small and specific positive occurrences were most effective in encouraging people to view their workday differently. These included making progress towards a goal, receiving positive feedback, being offered a new opportunity or having a pleasant interaction.
By reflecting on such experiences, employees in customer-facing industries were able to process positive events more fully. The researchers found that these reflections could influence how employees felt about their workday and, consequently, how they behaved at work.
Positive reflections influence behaviour
Taxi drivers who naturally focused on opportunities, growth and achieving their goals benefited more from the intervention overall, the study found.
Reflecting on positive experiences increased employees’ positive emotions and significantly increased their extra-role service behaviour, while reducing rule-breaking behaviour.
The drivers went beyond their regular duties to create positive experiences for customers and avoided actions that could negatively affect those experiences, such as driving aggressively.
The intervention also improved employees’ responses to unreasonable demands from entitled customers.
They became better able to understand the reasoning behind a customer’s demand, explain why it could not be accommodated or show understanding of the customer’s frustration.
Since customer-facing employees often have limited control over customers’ behaviour, the intervention focused on something they could control: how they processed and reflected on their work experiences.
A tool alongside workplace protections
The researchers stressed that individual reflection should not replace organisational measures aimed at improving customer behaviour.
While organisations are increasingly introducing measures to encourage respectful behaviour from customers, positive reflection can provide an additional tool for employees while broader protections develop.
The findings suggest that spending a few minutes at the end of the workday reflecting on three positive experiences can be a simple, evidence-based way for customer-facing employees to process their work experiences.
