Customer-oriented approach increases harassment risk

How are employees in the service industry affected by the way in which the Nordic service tradition sees the customer as the most important person in every situation? This is the subject of researchers Anna Fyrberg Yngfalk and Markus Fellesson’s project Customer Sexual Harassments in the Nordic Service Workplace, at the Service Research Centre, CTF, at Karlstad University. Drawing on previous research material, they analysed how the customer-centred service tradition affects service workplaces in the Nordic countries, and how its ideas are reproduced in research into service management and explained and applied in practice. Their research shows that the harassment risk increases when the concept that the customer is always right means that management and staff on the ground are expected to be flexible and fulfil all customers’ wants and needs.

“Service workplaces train and encourage their staff to approach their work in a way that involves doing as much as possible for the customer, so creating a culture where this is seen as important and natural,” says Anna Fyrberg Yngfalk. “This is a kind of overarching management principle that underpins all organisational activities, not just in the service sector but throughout society, because we are consumers, or at least are treated as customers, practically everywhere.”

The analysis is based on data from previous research projects which studied rude customers and customer service in several service occupations. The main focus of this particular project was retail, where many members of staff are often working alone or in the presence of only a few colleagues.

“The shop situation is fairly typical. Especially in terms of these more everyday problems in the grey area of ‘what actually was that? It didn’t exactly feel OK but it wasn’t bad enough to make a fuss about’, which easily arises when a service role is subject to commercial demands,” says Markus Fellesson.

Difficult to obtain management support when harassed by customers

The project found that the customer-centric ideal unintentionally normalises power and gender structures that in turn drive injustices in the workplace and ‘allow’ sexual harassment by customers towards staff. Female workers in the service industry are particularly vulnerable as they are expected to act and serve in a submissive manner, in line with stereotypical and heteronormative ideals of customer service.

“Even in situations where you shouldn’t reasonably be providing any form of service any longer, you still do it because it’s what you do if you are doing your job properly,” says Markus Fellesson. “No-one is saying it’s OK for customers to harass the staff, but it becomes a grey area, and it’s left to the staff to deal with that grey area themselves.”

The researchers state that conditions in the service sector mean that the management are directly and indirectly legitimising the status of the customer and continuing customer harassment, despite whistleblowing and calling out untenable working environments, as in the #MeToo movement, which included the voices of retail staff. The material includes examples of employees becoming passive and failing to confront or report unpleasant customers because they will not be fully supported by management or feel that they are failing to do their job and so might be fired.

“The idea of ‘working for the customer’ tends to prevent management functions from taking full responsibility for the workplace environment. In particular, it makes the management less inclined to tackle or prevent customer behaviour problems that are considered to be in a ‘grey area’, such as customers who are rude, demanding and generally obnoxious to staff. Our study shows that when work environments like this are permitted, there is a significantly increased risk of more explicit abuse and sexual harassment,” says Anna Fyrberg Yngfalk.

Need for alternative ways of demonstrating professionalism

The project shows that abuse from customers is almost a blind spot in terms of health and safety at work, despite the link between a customer-oriented approach and sexual harassment. The researchers call for alternative ways of demonstrating professionalism. Although staff are aware of the problem of abuse from customers, they have few options other than being polite, even when customers are aggressive.

“The importance of being customer-focused and friendly ‘no matter what’ still defines the idea of being a professional in the service industry and that makes it hard for staff to take countermeasures,” says Anna Fyrberg Yngfalk.

According to the researchers, the relatively high degree of independence that staff in the Nordic countries enjoy at work, combined with the commercial logic of earning money for the employer, can also reinforce vulnerability in the service sector in particular.

“We delegate responsibility and authority a lot in the Nordic countries, and there are a lot of plusses to that at work in general, but that means that these difficult cases also become a question of personal responsibility, where the employee is expected to cope on their own,” says Markus Fellesson.

We are seeing abuse from customers being normalised and tackling the customer being seen as an individual responsibility rather than a structural problem. This makes it difficult to call out the customer.

Markus Fellesson, Karlstad University

Key messages from the project

Managers need to be aware of the negative effects of a customer-oriented approach so that they are not indirectly prioritising the customer at the expense of their staff. Customer orientation as a management principle must come second to staff health and safety and not the other way round.
No forms of rudeness or abuse are acceptable. If low-key abuse is allowed to persist in the workplace, such as no-one calling out rude customers, the risk of more serious violence and sexual abuse increases dramatically.
Managers must raise the issue of sexual harassment, take problems seriously and make sure issues are reported. Keep an eye out for staff assuming they have to deal with problems themselves and incidents failing to reach management.
Managers must not only rely on formal procedures and should instead also encourage informal methods of reporting abuse from customers. Discussions between colleagues are often crucial to resolving the situation.
Advertising and marketing affect the way service personnel are viewed and employers are responsible for the expectations of staff that customers take from customer-oriented communication.
Staff training should include how to deal with sexual harassment. The employer and employee unions can build further on existing collaboration and make sure that sexual harassment is highlighted and included in training platforms, for example.
Decision-makers need to review how third-party abuse should be handled, potentially through initiatives to strengthen legal protection at work.
Employers in the service sector need more tools to help them tackle the problems, and for this more research is needed.

More about the project

The project Customer Sexual Harassments in the Nordic Service Workplace was granted funding in the funding initiative’s first call geared towards ongoing research able to add a Nordic dimension to its project.

Project partners

Markus Fellesson, Associate Professor of Business Administration, CTF, Karlstad University

Anna Fyrberg Yngfalk, Associate Professor of Business Administration, CTF, Karlstad University and the School of Business, Society and Engineering, Mälardalen University

Customer Sexual Harassments in the Nordic Service Workplace was based on the research project Customers with ‘benefits’: #MeToo, power and gender in customer-centric service work, CTF, Karlstad University headed by Anna Fyrberg Yngfalk and Markus Fellesson.