The study of 94 call-center workers at a large bank in China found that customer mistreatment (e.g., customers who yelled, argued, swore, etc.) put the employees in a bad mood after work. This, in turn, led to damaging thoughts<\/strong> (ruminating about the mistreatment) and<\/strong> behaviors<\/strong> (impulse shopping).<\/p>\n “Thus, stress from customers spills over to spoil people’s experiences outside of work,” said Russell Johnson, MSU associate professor of management.<\/p>\n The findings from Johnson and colleagues — who surveyed employees multiple times per day for 15 consecutive workdays — are published online in the Academy of Management Journal<\/em>.<\/p>\n The researchers also tested two interventions and found a potential solution to the problem.<\/p>\n On days when workers who thought about a recent incident where they helped customers (a “recall of prosocial action intervention”) or thought about an interaction from the customer’s viewpoint (a “perspective-taking intervention”) before starting work, it reduced their perceptions of mistreatment, reduced their negative mood and led to less rumination and impulse shopping.<\/p>\n Becoming more prosocial shifts attention away from the self and reduces impulsive and individualistic acts<\/strong>, according to the study.<\/p>\n “These recall and perspective-taking interventions are quick and easy exercises that customer-service employees can do prior to beginning the workday to reduce the stress from rude customers,” Johnson said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the\u00a0Michigan State University press release: Service workers who face verbal abuse from customers during the workday are more likely to go on unnecessary shopping sprees in the evening, indicates… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,8],"tags":[20,162,122,59,31,103,102],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22578"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22578"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22709,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22578\/revisions\/22709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/CrankyBoss.jpg\")
Service workers who face verbal abuse from customers during the workday are more likely to go on unnecessary shopping sprees in the evening<\/strong>, indicates new research co-authored by a Michigan State University business expert.<\/p>\n