Featured Faculty
Clinical Professor of Management & Organizations; Executive Director of Kellogg's Dispute Resolution and Research Center
Organizations Leadership Social Impact Mar 7, 2019
Podcast: Revenge of the Customer Service Rep
Why employees sabotage customers, and what companies can do about it.
0:00
/
9:27 
Michael Meier
Employees in all kinds of industries have to deal with unpleasant customers.
Add Insight
to your inbox.
to your inbox.
We’ll send you one email a week with content you actually want to read, curated by the Insight team.
Waiters get mistreated. Call center operators get screamed at. Salespeople have to smile at difficult clients. But why do those tense moments sometimes escalate to sabotage?
On this episode of the Kellogg Insight podcast, Cynthia Wang, clinical professor of management and organizations at Kellogg, shares what she discovered—and what companies can do about it.
The good news? There’s a way companies can help keep their employees from turning on their customers.
Note: The Kellogg Insight podcast is produced for the ear, and not meant to be read as a transcript. We encourage you to listen to the audio version above. However, a transcript of this episode is available here.
Featured Faculty
About the Research
Huang, Yu-Shan (Sandy), Rebecca L. Greenbaum, Julena M. Bonner, and Cynthia S. Wang. 2018. “Why Sabotage Customers Who Mistreat You? Activated Hostility and Subsequent Devaluation of Targets as a Moral Disengagement Mechanism.” Journal of Applied Psychology.
Suggested For You
Most Popular
It’s not just subject-matter expertise, according to a new study.
Most Popular Podcasts
Coworkers can make us crazy. Here’s how to handle tough situations.
Plus: Four questions to consider before becoming a social-impact entrepreneur.
Finding and nurturing high performers isn’t easy, but it pays off.
A Broadway songwriter and a marketing professor discuss the connection between our favorite tunes and how they make us feel.
More in Organizations
