콜센터에서 상담사의 지각된 고객언어폭력이 감정노동과 감정소진에 미치는 영향

The service industry is dominated by the notions of customer sovereignty, such as “The customer is always right”, “The customer is king” and “Service with a smile.” These notions create unequal power relationships between customer service representatives (CSRs) and customers, whereby CSRs are easily exposed to customer-instigated aggression. However, little is known about how customer mistreatment influences CSRs in the context of call centers which has become a typical service encounter of a firm. In this regard, this study sheds light on the consequences of customer verbal abuse that CSRs are frequently facing during the interaction with customers. Customer verbal abuse is defined as the extent to which CSRs are exposed to rude, uncivil verbal aggression, such as yelling, threats or insults. In general, the majority of incoming calls from customers that CSRs should handle all day long in call centers involve complaints about the firm’s products or service. On the phone, unsatisfied customers are likely to express their anger more easily against CSRs who are invisible. Therefore, verbal abuse of CSRs is the most effective means that customers express their anger at the firm because customers believe that CSRs work for it. Accordingly, customer verbal abuse is emerging as a major issue in call centers particularly, as a strong predictor of CSRs’ job burnout. Under the circumstance, this study attempts to examine the process of CSRs’ job burnout, applying the theoretical framework regarding employee job burnout that explains stressors, strain (i.e., job burnout) and consequences. That is, stressors trigger job burnout and thereby bring about negative outcomes to individuals and/or organizations. In this study, we consider customer verbal abuse and emotional labor as main stressors causing CSRs’ job burnout (i.e., emotional exhaustion). More specifically, we divide stressors into two dimensions: customertriggered and service role-triggered dimensions. In this study, customer verbal abuse refers to a stressor triggered by customers whereas emotional labor is one triggered by the service work. Further, we classify emotional labor into two types: surface acting and deep acting. As the consequences of emotional exhaustion, this study focuses on job performance and turnover intention. In a nutshell, the main purpose of this study is two-fold: first, we empirically verify how customer verbal abuse is associated with surface acting and deep acting and further CSR emotional exhaustion and job performancen in the context of call centers. Second, this study identifies the key determinant of CSR turnover intention. To test the proposed research model and hypotheses, we collected data on CSRs from two insurance call centers, such as life insurance and automobile/firm insurance. A total of 218 were used for the PLS (Partial Least Squares) analysis. The major findings of this study are as follows. First, customer verbal abuse is a strong predictor of CSR emotional exhaustion. Moreover, customer verbal abuse increases surface acting but has nothing to do with deep acting. Under the customer sovereignty paradigm, CSRs are frequently, consistently exposed to irritated customers’ rude and uncivil verbal aggression during the interaction with customers. Although call center managers recognize that superior customer service is generated by their CSRs, they are passive about solving CSRs’ difficulties namely, customer verbal abuse. Furthermore, call centers demand CSRs to endure customer verbal abuse to achieve their service goals. However, our results imply that call centers should take more interest in protecting CSRs from frequent customer aggression, showing the result that customer verbal abuse greatly increases CSRs' emotional exhaustion and surface acting. Second, concerning the relationship between emotional labor and emotional exhaustion/job performance, surface acting increases job performance as well as emotional exhaustion. On the contrary, although deep acting increases job performance, it does not bring about emotional exhaustion. Rather, deep acting contributes to decreasing emotional exhaustion. That is, deep acting enables CSRs to deliver emotional authenticity by internalizing emotions displayed, which in turn creates high job performance. When CSRs have justification for the emotions expressed to customers, emotional exhaustion is reduced. Finally, in comparison with job performance, emotional exhaustion is a stronger predictor of CSR turnover intention in the context of call centers. Our results indicate that emotional exhaustion considerably leads to increased turnover intention while it is negatively related to job performance. Besides, job performance has nothing to do with turnover intention. The results imply that the main reason form CSR turnover intention is job burnout. Overall, this study concludes that customer verbal abuse and emotional labor are essential issues to be solved immediately in call centers in order to reduce high CSR turnover intention and to create superior customer service.