Becoming cynical and depersonalized: how incivility, co-worker support and service rules affect employee job performance

Purpose Customer incivility is commonplace across service industries. Yet, there is little that is known about how uncivil customers affect employees. The purpose of this study is to examine how uncivil customer interactions affect employees' cynicism, depersonalization and job performance. Design/methodology/approach Study 1 uses the qualitative critical incident technique to content analyze employee perceptions of customer incivility and how it affects their job performance. Study 2 uses a 2 (incivility frequency: high vs low) x 2 (co-worker support: high vs low) x 2 (service rule commitment: high vs low) quasi-experimental between-subjects design. Findings Results find that there is a significant interaction effect of customer incivility frequency, co-worker emotional support and service rule commitment on employee cynicism and depersonalization, which leads to decreased job performance and more harmful experiences to other customers. Practical implications The findings provide practical implications on the importance of managing customer incivility, providing co-worker support and how this affects employee attitudes and service they deliver to other customers. Originality/value The results build upon the incivility, co-worker support and service rule commitment literature, conservation of resources theory, as well as identifying key variables core to hospitality and tourism research: cynicism and depersonalization that provide important implications for actions of tourism and hospitality firms.