The Effect of Verbal Customer Aggression on Employee Turnover Intention: The Mediating Role of Emotional Exhaustion
Salih Dursun, Oğuz BaşolThe service sector is one of the rapidly growing sectors of today, and the number and rate of people employed in this sector are increasing every year. But, the power imbalance between employees and customers occasionally causes negative interactions between employees and customers. In this respect, the phenomenon of customer aggression, seen as the “dark side” of service work, is one of the important problem areas of today’s business life. This research aims to determine the mediating role of emotional exhaustion in the effect of verbal customer aggression on employees’ turnover intention. The results of the research, conducted with the participation of 351 sales and customer representatives, show that customer verbal aggression positively affects the emotional exhaustion and turnover intention. Also, the results show that emotional exhaustion fully mediates the relationship between verbal customer aggression and turnover intention. The obtained results show that it is very important for organization administrations to produce policies to prevent customer aggressive behaviors in terms of decreasing the emotional exhaustion and turnover intention of employees.
Müşteri Sözlü Saldırganlığının Çalışanların İşten Ayrılma Niyeti Üzerine Etkisi: Duygusal Tükenmenin Aracılık Rolü
Salih Dursun, Oğuz BaşolHizmet sektörü günümüzün hızla büyüyen sektörlerinden biridir ve bu sektörde istihdam edilenlerin sayısı ve oranı her geçen yıl artmaktadır. Ancak, çalışanlar ile müşteriler arasındaki güç dengesizliği zaman zaman çalışanlar ve müşteriler arasında negatif etkileşim olmasına neden olmaktadır. Bu bağlamda hizmet işlerinin “karanlık yüzü” olarak görülen müşteri saldırganlığı olgusu, günümüz iş hayatının önemli sorun alanlarından biridir. Mevcut araştırma, müşteri sözlü saldırganlığının çalışanların işten ayrılma niyeti üzerine etkisinde duygusal tükenmenin aracılık rolünü belirlemeyi amaçlamaktadır. 351 satış ve müşteri temsilcisinin katılımıyla gerçekleştirilen araştırma sonuçları, müşteri sözlü saldırganlığının duygusal tükenmeyi ve işten ayrılma niyetini pozitif yönde etkilediğini göstermektedir. Ayrıca elde edilen sonuçlar, duygusal tükenmenin, müşteri sözlü saldırganlığı ve işten ayrılma niyeti ilişkisinin tam aracısı olduğunu göstermektedir. Bulgular, işletme yönetimlerinin müşteriden kaynaklanan saldırgan davranışları önleyici politikalar üretmesinin, çalışanların duygusal tükenmesinin ve işten ayrılma niyetinin azaltılması açısından oldukça önemli olduğunu göstermektedir.
As a result of the extension of the service sector, a consumer-centered economic system emerged (Rafaeli et al., 2012, p. 931). The fact that customer satisfaction has become so important, and today’s customer-oriented approach leads the companies running in this area to adopt the philosophy of “the customer is always right”, hence, this results in an unequal power mechanism between employees and customers (Grandey, Dickter & Sin, 2004, p. 3; Choi, Kim, Lee & Lee, 2014, p. 273). As a reflection of this, employees may be subjected to treatment such as verbal harassment, unfair demands and disrespectful behaviors from customers (Wang et al., 2013, p. 989). One of the concepts used in the literature to express negative behaviors caused by the customer is verbal customer aggression. The concept of verbal customer aggression expresses customer behaviors such as swearing, shouting, threatening, humiliation and mocking (Grandey, Kern & Frone, 2007, p. 68; Yeh, 2015, p. 1; Li & Zhou, 2013, p. 893).
Studies show that customer-related aggressive behavior is quite common (Grandey, Dickter & Sin, 2004; Hughes & Tadic, 1998; Harrris & Reynolds, 2003; Akgeyik & Delen, 2009; Kavi & Ceylan, 2016). The increase in the frequency of customer aggression also increases the burnout levels of employees (Grandey et al., 2004, p. 402). Also, social interactions based on unequal relationships between service workers and customers trigger greater resource loss and lead to emotional exhaustion (Kim, Paek, Choi & Lee, 2012, p. 508; Gong, Sun & Zhang, 2018; Demerdash & Said, 2018; Kind, Eckert, Steinlin, Ferget & Schmid, 2008). Studies show that customerrelated negative behavior and emotional exhaustion may be the sources of the turnover intention of employees’ (Walsh, 2011, p. 68; Liu et al., 2018; Gong et al., 2018; Bamfo, Dogbe & Mingle, 2018; Onay ve Kılcı, 2011, p. 372; Yıldırım, Erul & Kelebek, 2014, p. 40; Yıldız & Çolak, 2018, p. 625; Interest, 2019, p. 34; Adams, Hollingsworth & Osman, 2019, p. 455; Kim, 2019, p. 21). Also, there are some studies investigate the mediating effect of burnout in the effect of customer-related aggressive behavior on turnover intention (Han, Bonn & Cho, 2016; Karatepe, Yorganci & Haktanır, 2009b).
Method
The sample of the study consists of 351 employees working as sales and customer representatives in the service sector in Trabzon, Turkey. The survey form consists of four parts. The first part aims to determine the demographic characteristics of the participants. The second part aims to detect the verbal customer aggression that employees are exposed to. The scale used in this section is the 5-item verbal customer aggression scale, developed by Dormann and Zapf (2004), and the validity-reliability study is carried out by the authors. The third section aims to determine the level of emotional exhaustion experienced by customer representatives. The scale used in this section is the 9-item emotional exhaustion scale, developed by Maslach and Jackson (1981), and the validity-reliability study was performed by Üngüren, Doğan, Özmen and Tekin (2010). The last section aims to determine the turnover intention of the customer representatives. The 3-item turnover intention scale, developed by Cammann, Fichman, Jenkins and Klesh (1979) and the validityreliability studies conducted by Gül, Gökçe and Gökçe (2004) were used.
Results
According to the results, 50.4% of the participants are women, 48.4% are married and 39% have a bachelor-degree level. The ages of the participants ranged from 18 to 50, with an average age of 29 (± 5.96), and their experience ranged from 1 to 27 years, with an average of 6 years (± 4.97). Preacher and Hayes (2004: 721-722) macro was used to test the hypotheses in SPSS. For estimation, the 5000 bootstrapping and a bias-corrected percentile method were used to determine the 95% confidence interval. Accordingly, verbal customer aggression has a positive effect on emotional exhaustion (β: 0.40; t: 6.91), verbal customer aggression positively affects employees’ turnover intention (β: 0.51; t: 4, 97), emotional exhaustion positively affects the turnover intention (β: 1.42; t: 25.21) and finally, emotional exhaustion has a fully mediating role in the effect of customer verbal aggression on turnover intention (β ‘: -0, 60; t: -0.92 - Sobel Z: 6.66789; p: 0.00).
Discussion
Many studies in the literature show that one of the important problems caused by verbal customer aggression is emotional exhaustion (Grandey et al., 2007; Ben-Zur and Yagil, 2005; Karatepe et al., 2010b; Dursun & Aytaç, 2014; Sommovigo, Setti & Argentero, 2019). Also, the literature shows that customer aggression has a significant impact on the turnover intention of employees’ (Karatepe et al., 2009a; Gong et al., 2018; Bamfo et al., 2018), emotional exhaustion has a positive effect on the turnover intention and lastly, emotional exhaustion has a fully mediating role in the effect of verbal customer aggression on turnover intention (Onay & Kılcı, 2011; Yıldırım et al., 2014; Yıldız & Çolak, 2018; Faiz, 2019; Adams et al., 2019; Kim, 2019; Grandey et al., 2004; Karatepe et al., 2009).