SERVICE FAILURE
AS A CAUSATIVE OF CUSTOMER AGGRESSION ON HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY EMPLOYEES.
By
Nwokorie, E.C.
Department of
Hospitality Management and Technology
The Federal
Polytechnic Ilaro, Nigeria
08034072296
eddygozie@gmail.com
Abstract
This study investigates
service breakdown as the cause of customers’ aggressive behaviours in the
hospitality industry and how customer aggression affects employee performance,
with particular reference to three selected hotels in Ogun State. Survey method
was adopted in conducting the research which involved the use of interview and
questionnaire. The questionnaire was the major instrument for data collection
as both primary and secondary data were used. A hypothesis was formulated for
the study to confirm whether (or not) there is significant relationship between
service failure and customer aggression. Data analysis was done with simple
percentage whereas chi-square (X2) statistical technique was used to
test the hypothesis. The study revealed that customer aggression is caused by
poor service delivery as confirmed by 74.7% of respondents, among other
reasons. Over 79% of the respondents agreed that adoption of maintenance
culture is effective in eliminating customer complaint and aggression.
Frontline employees are the major victims of customer aggression, hence it is
imperative to recognize that customer aggression towards hospitality industry employees
is a serious problem confronting the industry. The study recommends an
improvement in customer satisfaction in order to give customers value for their
money. Supervisors should endeavour to offer meaningful support to subordinates
in managing emotions and stress, while customers should be enlightened on the
need to be reasonable while making demands and complaints.
Keywords: Customer aggression, customer
satisfaction, employee performance, service quality.
INTRODUCTION
Hotel customers in
recent times are aware of the ‘value for money’ concept, irrespective of the
size of the hotel. The fact that hotel products and services are not
inexpensive; and the extent to which these products and services are rendered
is significant upon the financial strength of the customer; makes it a
necessity for guests to always have this craving for all round value for their
money. Customers want to be satisfied having spent a lot of finance for the
required product and desired service, and the slightest error in the course of
service delivery by the service provider may likely give rise to aggression by
the customer as a way of driving home their displeasure on service breakdown.
Customer aggression is
defined by the Commonwealth of Australia (2014) as “an unacceptable hostile
behaviour exhibited by a current or former customer of an organization towards
an employee that creates an intimidating, frightening or offensive situation”. Extensive
studies in the hotel industry has exposed the fact that guests are less able to
treat customer contact employees in a courteous and respectful manner. Grandey,
Dickter and Sin (2004) confirms that “work behaviours like yelling, rudeness
and threats have been studied under multiple labels, including interactional
injustice, work aggression, workplace bullying, incivility, and interpersonal
conflict. The reality here is that these workplace behaviours are related to
negative workplace reactions like poor attitude to work, emotional exhaustion,
stress and health related problems, retaliatory behaviours, and turnover
intentions (Grandey, et al, 2004).
OBJECTIVES
OF STUDY
The study investigates
service breakdown as a possible cause of customer aggression in the hospitality
industry and its impact on employee performance. It equally looks at the
possibility of minimizing customer aggression in the hospitality industry
through maintenance culture and service improvement. To this end, three hotels
in Ogun State, Nigeria, were investigated as case study to understand the
dynamics of customer aggression within the Nigerian setting.
HYPOTHESIS
Ho: Failure
in service delivery has no significant relationship with customer aggression.
LITERATURE
REVIEW
In an attempt to
breakdown the wide range of aggressive workplace behaviours, Neuman and Baron
(1998) classified workplace aggression based on verbal-physical,
direct-indirect, and active-passive dichotomies. Other researchers equally
offer a classification system based on the relationship between the aggressor
and the victim. For instance, the Type II (Customer/Client) classification
occurs when the aggressor has a relationship with the organization and reacts
aggressively while being served as a customer. Therefore, customer aggression
is a form of workplace violence including any unacceptable hostile behaviour
towards frontline employees that creates an intimidating, frightening or
offensive situation thereby adversely affecting work performance and wellbeing.
Possible
Causes of Customer Aggression
Service Failure: Service failure,
simply defined, is service performance that fails to meet a customer’s
expectations. Typically, when a service failure occurs, a customer will expect
to be compensated for the inconvenience in the form of any combination of
refunds, credits, discounts or apologies (Henning-Thurau, 2004).
Violence and aggression
in the hospitality industry may come about between customers and employees when
customers have disputes or complaints about poor (or failure in) service
delivery, and dissatisfaction in product output, including requests for
refunds, anger or overlong waits in queues. In other words, customer aggression
may likely arise when complaints of service failure are treated with levity by
frontline employees, hence the concerned customer resorts to the display anger,
ego, or disappointment as a result of failed expectations on the part of a
given hospitality establishment. The issue here is that customer aggression do
not just happen, it has remote and immediate causes, which definitely is
traceable to the service provider (Reynolds &
Harris, 2006).
Furthermore, a recent
study revealed that “poor outlook management” by customer contact employees is
a possible cause of strong emotional outburst by customers who, as a result of
unprofessional dressing, make sexual advances at frontline employees, hence
“addressing them the way they are dressed” (Nwokorie, 2015). A frontline
employee who dresses in an unprofessional manner unknowingly arouse negative
emotions from unsuspecting customers who end up either making advances or
uncourteous remarks towards the employee.
Behaviours
of Customer Aggression
Customer aggression is
manifested in many forms in the hospitality industry. The most frequent forms
of aggression exhibited by customers in the hospitality industry include;
a. Expressions
of Hostility: These include verbal
hostilities like yelling at a customer contact employee, shouting, swearing, or
sending threatening messages through emails, phone calls, and the social media.
Neuman and Baron (1998) added that they include dirty looks, or other negative
eye contact, giving someone a silent treatment, holding target’s work up to
ridicule, negative or obscene gestures towards the target, interrupting the
target when he/she is speaking/talking, flaunting status/acting in a
condescending manner, verbal sexual harassment or sexual gestures, and sending
unfairly negative info to higher levels in the company.
b. Overt
aggression or physical violence: These
may include physical attack like, hitting, pushing, shoving; attack with
weapon, threats to physical violence and failing to protect target’s welfare or
safety.
c. Obstructionism:
This may include breaking of the working computer of the employee, confiscation
of his or her cellphone and other working materials, as well as other forms of interruptions
to the target’s work flow that is directed towards interfering with or blocking
the target’s work.
Impact
of Customer Aggression on Employees’ Performance in Hotels.
It is not entirely out
of place to state that customer aggression is a work-stressor; hence, it is a
source of stress to hotel employees. The stress situation in the work
environment induces a strong state of emotional and physiological excitement.
Chronic levels of aggression can result in psychological and behavioural
strains.
Employees in the
hospitality industry view customer aggression as stressful and threatening,
typically accompanied by a negative emotion; like fear and anger; and
physiological arousal. Lazarus and Folkman (2004) observed that given the human
discomfort with being the target of anger, and the fact that this behaviour
communicates that the goal of satisfying the customer is not being met, it is therefore
imperative to note that aggression (whether verbal or physical) is highly
stressful; hence it impacts negatively on the job performance of the hotel
employee and they are most likely to carry out service operations with
unnecessary apprehension and fear. In such situations, workflow is likely to
slow down, and this is likely to result to customer heightened complaint and
dissatisfaction, and invariably, the establishment will lose revenue. If such
situation persists, management of the establishment might consider the option
of reducing staff strength, thus creating unintentional turnover
Additionally, Karatepe (2011) wrote that frontline employees who are
routinely confronted with aggressive behaviors of customers such as verbal and
physical aggression, and sexual harassment, experience elevated levels of
emotional exhaustion/burnout. Under these circumstances, negative outcomes
such as job and life dissatisfaction, absenteeism, and turnover intentions are inevitable
(Boyd, 2002; Grandey, Dickter, & Sin, 2004; Karatepe et al., 2009).
A person
who has experienced customer aggression more often is more likely to have a
negative general view and interpretation of ambiguous comments from customers
as being aggressive in nature. Therefore, a customer may make an ambiguous
comment on service related issue and an employee with high negative feeling
about aggression may respond more defensively, evoking hostility in the
customer. Similarly, an employee with high negative perception of difficult
customer has fewer coping resources, and this may portray the event as more
threatening.
Customer Aggression Management Strategies
Management
of hospitality establishments can adopt the following strategies in managing
customer aggression;
a.
Quality Service Approach:
Service quality is a way to manage business process in order to ensure total
satisfaction to the customer at all times during the business transaction.
Igbojekwe (2009) wrote that the employee must possess the technical competence
and interpersonal skill to; be ceaselessly courteous with the customer; greet
the customer with a genuine smile; and be at the disposal of the customer to
exhibit willingness to quality service delivery.
b.
Social Skills Approach: Akpabio
(2008) wrote that “it is a waste of time to argue that customers are difficult,
because we are in the business to please them irrespective of their faults.
Social competence, therefore, focuses on the ability of the service employee to
key into the customer’s perspective during interactions. Specifically, the
perspective can be visually (understanding what the customer thinks) or
emotionally (understanding how the customer feels). These facts enable the
employee to understand customer needs and consider them necessary for
fulfilment (Henning-Thurau, 2004).
c.
Staff Training: Training
in the hospitality industry should emphasize on voice modulation, facial
expression, and trusting/natural attitude. There is need to adopt good people
communication skills acquired during training to enhance customer/staff interactions.
In
this respect, customer service employees are required to handle mental
responsibilities of customers while delivering services with a genuine sense of
concern and interests. This part of service is the significant component of
customer perceptions of service quality (Misty & Robert, 2008; Karen, 1999;
Chu, 2002).
d.
Regular Maintenance of
Facilities: Hotel facilities are put in excessive and regular use by customers
on daily basis, hence these facilities suffer undue wear and tear. It is,
therefore, imperative that these facilities be maintained to forestall issues
of reoccurring customer complaint as a result of malfunctioning of facilities.
e.
Public Relations: The use
of public relations to manage customer aggression is necessary because of its
ability to establish support and goodwill between customers and hotel
employees. In this case, management should adopt proper communication channels
to ensure customers that the employees are at their service.
f.
Swift Resolution of
Customer Complaint: A dissatisfied customer will always complain for attention.
Complaints should never be glossed over or taken flippantly as this has the
tendency of flaring the temper of the affected customer.
METHODOLOGY
Survey research design
was adopted for data collection which included the use of questionnaire,
interview and personal observations.
Study
Population
The target population was
made up of supervisors, and frontline employees of the establishments of study,
as well as selected customers of the establishments. A census of the study
population was conducted as represented in Table 1.
Table
1: Population of Study
|
Selected Hotel
|
Frontline
Employees
|
Supervisors
|
Customers
|
Total
Population
|
|
Hotel A
|
10
|
4
|
10
|
24
|
|
Hotel B
|
15
|
8
|
16
|
39
|
|
Hotel C
|
10
|
7
|
10
|
27
|
|
Total
|
35
|
19
|
36
|
90
|
n=90
Source:
Field Survey, 2015.
Sample
Size
The sample size for the study was determined using
the Taro Yamen formula:
where:
n
= sample size
N
= finite population
1
= constant
e
= correction factor level (level of significance of error assumed to be 5% or 0.05)
(Schawnms, 1994). Therefore, the sample size for the three strata of the
population were separately determined thus;
a.
Frontline
Employees
b.
Supervisors
c.
Customers
The research instrument
was, as a result, distributed to the respondents accordingly as represented in
Table 2.
Table
2: Respondents Distribution by
Establishments
|
Selected Hotel
|
Frontline
Employees (r1)
|
% of (r1)
|
Supervisors
(r2)
|
% of (r2)
|
Customers
(r3)
|
% of (r3)
|
Σ (r)
|
|
A
|
9
|
10.84
|
4
|
4.81
|
8
|
9.63
|
25.28
|
|
B
|
13
|
15.66
|
7
|
8.43
|
15
|
18.1
|
42.19
|
|
C
|
10
|
12.05
|
7
|
8.43
|
10
|
12.05
|
32.53
|
|
Total
|
32
|
38.55
|
18
|
21.67
|
33
|
39.78
|
100
|
n=83
Source:
Field Survey, 2015.
RESEARCH
RESULTS
Data
Analyses
Data generated from
field survey were analyzed using simple percentage method while chi-square
statistical method was used in testing the stated hypothesis. The results of
the study are presented in the following tables.
Statement: Customer aggression is mostly caused by poor
service delivery on the part of the hotel industry.
Table
3: Poor Service Delivery
|
Options
|
Responses
(r)
|
Total
|
Σ(r)%
|
|||||
|
|
Hotel
A
|
(rA%)
|
Hotel
B
|
(rB%)
|
Hotel
C
|
(rC%)
|
|
|
|
Disagree
|
6
|
7.2
|
6
|
7.23
|
9
|
10.8
|
21
|
25.3
|
|
Agree
|
15
|
18.1
|
29
|
34.93
|
18
|
21.7
|
62
|
74.7
|
|
Total
|
21
|
25.3
|
35
|
42.2
|
27
|
32.5
|
83
|
100
|
n=83
Source:
Field Survey, 2015
Results in Table 3 show that 83
questionnaires were returned as distributed among the respondents from the
three hotels, and 74.7% were in agreement that poor service delivery is a
causative of customer aggression in the hotel industry
Statement: Customers are not likely to react aggressively
when complaints are poorly handled.
Table
4: Poor Management of Customer
Complaint
|
Options
|
Responses
(r)
|
Total
|
Σ(r)%
|
|||||
|
|
Hotel
A
|
(rA%)
|
Hotel
B
|
(rB%)
|
Hotel
C
|
(rC%)
|
|
|
|
Disagree
|
10
|
12.05
|
24
|
28.92
|
17
|
20.5
|
51
|
61.4
|
|
Agree
|
11
|
13.25
|
11
|
13.25
|
10
|
12.0
|
32
|
38.6
|
|
Total
|
21
|
25.3
|
35
|
42.2
|
27
|
32.5
|
83
|
100
|
n=83
Source:
Field Survey, 2015
In Table 4, the 83 respondents returned
the distributed questionnaires out of which 51 respondents (61.4%) rejoined in
the negative thereby attesting that poor management of customer complaint is a
factor that triggers off customer aggression against hotel frontline employees.
Statement:
Customer complaint and aggression can be
eliminated by regular maintenance of hotel facilities
Table
5: Adoption of Maintenance Culture
|
Options
|
Responses
(r)
|
Total
|
Σ(r)%
|
|||||
|
|
Hotel
A
|
(rA%)
|
Hotel
B
|
(rB%)
|
Hotel
C
|
(rC%)
|
|
|
|
Disagree
|
8
|
9.6
|
4
|
4.82
|
5
|
6.0
|
17
|
20.5
|
|
Agree
|
13
|
15.7
|
31
|
37.35
|
22
|
26.5
|
66
|
79.5
|
|
Total
|
21
|
25.3
|
35
|
42.2
|
27
|
32.5
|
83
|
100
|
n=83
Source:
Field Survey, 2015
Responses in Table 5 indicate that 79.5%
of the respondents attested positively that adoption of maintenance culture by
hotel establishments will help eliminate reoccurring customer complaints, and
by extension, customer aggression.
Test
of Hypotheses
Table 6: Statistical Table for the Hypothesis
(at 0.05 significance level)
|
From Table
|
Calculated X2
Value
|
Critical X2
Value
|
(O – E)2
|
(O – E)2÷E
|
|
3 and 4
|
22.08
|
3.841
|
961
|
31
|
Source:
Field Survey, 2015.
Since the calculated X2 value
of 22.08 is greater than the critical X2 value of 3.841 as revealed
in Table 6, we reject the null hypothesis which states that failure in service
delivery has no significant relationship with customer aggression. Accordingly,
there is significant relationship between service delivery and customer
aggression in the hotel industry.
CONCLUSION
This study has exposed
customer aggression as a menace to the hotel industry. Employees’ emotional
exhaustion, high negative job performance, and turnover intentions within the
industry have been linked to continuous aggression by hotel customers. However,
customers have attested that most aggressive behaviours could be traced to have
emanated from service failure to total service breakdown, and poor customer
service management on the part of the hotel industry.
RECOMMENDATIONS
1. Prompt
attention should be given to customer complaint the moment they are brought up
by hotel customers.
2. A
customer relationship management (CRM) unit should be put in place by every
hotel establishment in order to further educate customers on aggression related
issues and being reasonable while making demands, and by so doing, make
customers realize they are the “reason for the occasion.”
3. Customer
satisfaction should be seen as a continuous process within the industry, hence
it is imperative that continuous improvement in customer satisfaction should be
enforced in order to give customers value for their money.
4. Training
should continuously be organized, especially, for frontline employees on issues
of emotional labour and customer aggression management with a view to expecting
cases of difficult customers, so that they may not be thrown “off guard” when
these customers come on board with their cases.
5. Hotel
establishments should create a form of maintenance culture that would establish
a regular and articulated maintenance system to forestall breakdown in the
service process and enhance customer satisfaction. This will go a long way in
eliminating unnecessary complaints from customers.
6. Supervisors
should endeavour to offer reasonable support to subordinates in managing
emotions and stress. Various studies suggests that
supervisor support acts as a moderator of the effect of customer aggression on
emotional exhaustion, life satisfaction, and turnover intentions. Conservation
of Resources (COR) Theory suggests that support emerging from supervisors can
mitigate the effects of stressors on burnout, because employees may be able to
circumvent the resource depletion process and avoid burnout, if they have
adequate job resources such as supervisor support (Halbesleben & Buckley,
2004; Hobfoll, 2001). Cole and Bedeian (2007) also argue that social support at
work may minimize the detrimental effects of exhaustion that emanate from
stressful situations. Accordingly, employees with sufficient supervisor support
can deal with customer aggression, and experience less emotional exhaustion
than employees who lack this support. Employees can consider supervisor support
as a coping mechanism to reduce the stress-outcome relationship (Carlson &
Perrewé, 1999; Parasuraman, Greenhaus, & Granrose, 1992).
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