Washington, Feb 18 (Inditop.com) Incivility among employees upsets consumers and is bad for business, says a new study. When employees are rude to one another, it creates a bad impression that affects consumer judgements of the company, it has found.
Christine Porath, Debbie MacInnis, and Valerie Folkes from University of Southern California (USC) conducted several studies on incivility among employees.
They found that consumers often witnessed incidents of employees misbehaving with one another.
“Employee incivility was reported across a variety of industries, including restaurants, banks, government offices, gyms, retail stores, universities, airlines, and entertainment venues,” the study authors write.
“Approximately 40 percent reported witnessing an act of employee incivility at least once per month,” the research says.
Across four studies, the authors found that consumers witnessing acts of incivility among employees is extremely detrimental to companies.
“It induces consumer anger and causes consumers to make broad and negative conclusions (generalisations) about the firm as a whole, other employees who work there, and expectations about future encounters with the firm; conclusions that go well beyond the uncivil incident.”
Surprisingly, these negative responses extended even to cases when the uncivil employee was trying to help the customer by rectifying a delay in service delivery, says a USC release.
“Our findings suggest one reason why training in the treatment of customers and employees enhances the bottom line because of its impact on customer behaviour,” the authors conclude.
These findings were published in the Journal of Consumer Research.
