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Journal of Consumer Culture

ARTICLE

The Customer is Always Right?

Exploring the concept of customer bullying in the British
Employment Service
VICTORIA BISHOP AND HELGE HOEL
Manchester University, UK

Abstract
Drawing on in-depth qualitative data from the British Public Employment Service
(ES), this article sets out to examine the concept of customer bullying, an aspect
largely overlooked within the literature. Highlighting the subjective, socially
constructed nature of bullying, this article found that certain customer behaviours
that were consistent with definitions of workplace bullying were not labelled as such
by the ES frontline staff, but instead were seen as ‘part of the job’.

Key words
customer abuse ● customer violence ● emotional labour ● harassment at work ●
service work

INTRODUCTION
Bullying in the workplace is a concept that has recently mushroomed
within the literature (for reviews see Hoel et al., 1999; Einarsen et al., 2003).
However, although frequently applied to behaviour of management (e.g.
Rayner et al., 2002), workplace colleagues (e.g. Leymann, 1990) and to
organizational practices (e.g. Liefooghe, 2003), the concept of bullying by
the customer has largely been overlooked although it has not been explic-
itly excluded. This article sets out to rectify this omission by systematically
exploring this concept through empirical data taken from a case study of

Copyright © 2008 SAGE Publications

(London, Los Angeles, New Delhi and Singapore)
Vol 8(3): 341–367 1469-5405 [DOI: 10.1177/1469540508095303]
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the British Employment Service (ES), an organization providing various

social security benefits whilst also acting as a job clearing house. Like other
public sector organizations, the ES has adopted many practices devised
within private, commercial organizations. One such example is the use of
‘customer service practices’ and the term ‘customer’, where previously
service recipients were seen as ‘claimants’ or ‘clients’.
Highlighting the subjective, socially constructed nature of bullying, this
article found that certain customer behaviours that were consistent with
definitions of workplace bullying were not labelled as such by the ES front-
line staff, but instead were seen as part of the negative customer behaviour
that was considered ‘part of the job’. This article argues that behaviours
that may be seen as bullying in other contexts are not experienced as such
within the ES because of contextual factors, including the nature of
customer service work. We found that features of customer service work
enabled bullying behaviour to take place and contributed to constructing
all negative customer behaviour as part of the job. First, we explore the
relevant literature within the areas of bullying and customer service, before
explaining the methodological approach used. Next, the empirical section
compares the experience of customer behaviour by frontliners with dimen-
sions of behaviour common to definitions of bullying. It is demonstrated
that despite often corresponding to definitions of bullying, negative
customer behaviour is not labelled as such by frontline staff, but rather seen
as part of the job. Following on from this, we examine how, paradoxically,
management behaviour is sometimes described as bullying. Finally, the
findings are discussed and their implications explored for both the nature
of customer service work and also wider social representations of bullying.
Our research suggests that although organizational factors such as the nature
of customer service work will impact upon frontliners’ interpretation of
customer behaviour, expert conceptualizations (academics/trade unions/
media) and use of the term ‘workplace bullying’ will also have an impact
on frontliners’ interpretation of customer behaviour, affecting what they
consider as bullying.

CUSTOMER SERVICE AND CUSTOMER BULLYING

Within the last few decades, the continued growth of the interactive service
population has pushed ‘customer–worker’ relations to the centre stage.
Mimicking the pattern of development in the USA, today customer service
in the UK is frequently based on the ideology that ‘the customer is king’,
a concept that is now widespread in organizations throughout contempor-
ary capitalist economies (Macdonald and Sirianni, 1996; Edwards, 2000).

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Inherent in the notion of customer sovereignty is the idea of relational

superiority (Hoffman, 1998) and individual autonomy and choice
(Korczynski and Ott, 2004). This ‘enchanting myth of sovereignty’ is used
to manage the organization’s need for an efficient provision of service,
whilst still convincing the customer that they are in control as the sover-
eign (Korczynski and Ott, 2004). Consumption, however, is a fragile process
(Edwards, 2000) and it is often argued that when customer sovereignty is
revealed as a myth, disillusionment can result (Ritzer, 1999; Korczynski,
2002).
It may be one thing for service workers to treat appreciative customers
as ‘king’, but it is quite another to keep up the emotional display required
by management under the pressure of an offensive customer (Korczynski
and Ott, 2004). However, frontline workers are still required to suppress
their own feelings in the face of awkward customers and to continue to
display emotion that is desirable according to management. This notion is
frequently termed ‘emotional labour’ after a groundbreaking study by
Hochschild (1983) where she argued that flight attendants have to manage
emotions so that they can provide the customer service desired by manage-
ment and engender the ‘correct’ emotions in the customer. Hochschild
explains that frontliners are required to think ‘sales’ (1983: 108), no matter
how awkward the passenger is being and regardless of how the frontliner
really feels about the situation. Although some writers have emphasized the
positive aspects of customer service work (e.g. Tolich, 1993) other studies
describe the negative consequences of emotional labour. For example,
amongst other thing,s Hochschild points to the possibility of worker
‘burnout’, something that is further examined by Yagil and Zur (2007), who
argue that workers who do not cope effectively with emotional dissonance,
frequently burn out. Equally, Zapf et al. (2003) and Zapf and Holz (2006)
focus on emotional dissonance as the most difficult aspect of emotion work
and writers such as Zapf et al. (1999) highlight emotion work as a source
of stress. Although the service literature does not specifically mention the
concept of customer bullying, Korczynski (2002) points out that it is when
customers become irate and abusive that subservience to customers is most
keenly felt. Equally, some writers also point to the negative behaviour of
customers when exploring customer harassment (Hughes and Tadic, 1998;
Williams, 2003; Handy, 2006). In fact, several parallels can be drawn here.
First, victims of such behaviour are frequently stigmatized and seen as
culpable in some way (Cockburn, 1983). Second, this behaviour is often
normalized and seen as legitimate (Hearn and Parkin, 2001; Handy, 2006).
Overall, writing on the frontliner–customer interaction paints a picture of

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a difficult relationship characterized by a power imbalance (Korczynski and

Ott, 2004; Bishop et al., 2005) with frequently abusive (Hochschild, 1983)
and sometimes even violent customers (Boyd, 2002; Bishop et al., 2005).
However, this literature has not previously conceptualized any negative
behaviour as customer bullying, a significant gap that this article aims to
help rectify. The absence of this conceptualization of customers’ behaviour
is also evident within the literature that specifically focuses on bullying, and
is to this we now turn.

BULLYING AND THE CONCEPT OF THE CUSTOMER

Although the general concept of workplace bullying has frequently been
examined in the literature (for an overview see Einarsen et al., 2003) the
concept of customer bullying has never been systematically explored.
Nevertheless, the potential for bullying by customers or clients has been
acknowledged by some writers (Hoel et al., 1999). In a nationwide study
of workplace bullying in Great Britain by Hoel and Cooper (2000), they
found that 8 percent of those who labelled their experience as bullying
identified customers or clients as the source of their problem, with substan-
tially higher numbers within customer service industries, e.g. retailing and
hotels.
The wider workplace bullying literature has largely focused on the
target and their experiences of bullying, as opposed to those of the
perpetrator. Whilst writing in Britain tends to focus on the target’s
interpretations of the perpetrator’s behaviour (e.g. Adams, 1992; Rayner,
1997; Hoel et al., 2001), the Scandinavian literature is more concerned
with the target’s’ behaviour per se (e.g. Leymann, 1990, 1996; Einarsen
and Skogstad, 1996). However, despite acknowledging the inherent
subjectivity of the target’s perceptions of bullying behaviours, this subject
is largely approached through a positivistic perspective treating bullying as
an objective concept that can be recorded and defined accordingly. Taking
a different perspective, we argue that the notion of bullying itself is a
socially constructed concept only rendered meaningful by targets’ percep-
tions (Liefooghe, 2003). In line with this approach, in our empirical
section, we will explore how despite the fact that frontliners’ understand-
ings of certain customer behaviour corresponded to common elements in
definitions of bullying, service workers did not label this behaviour as
bullying.
Although we do not aim to provide a definition of what is and is not
bullying per se, within this article we use the term ‘bullying’ in a way that
is based on common understandings within the literature. Despite the

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frequent debate surrounding the specifics of definitions of bullying, there

is still a growing conversion of understanding with respect to the behav-
iours and processes involved (Di Martino et al., 2003; Einarsen et al., 2003).
These appear to be:
1. the nature of behaviour involved;
2. the frequency and duration of behaviour experienced;
3. the imbalance of power between the parties;
4. the effects on or the reaction of the target; and
5. stigmatization of victims.
Therefore, within this article we use the term bullying to mean any organiz-
ational behaviour that includes all or at least a several of these behaviours.
In our empirical section, we will focus on each of these elements in turn
and explore how and to what extent they may correspond to frontliners’
experience of customer behaviour. Other elements of definitions discussed
in the literature, e.g. the intent of perpetrators (e.g. Randall, 1997) and the
character of behaviour set against a standard of conduct (Keashly, 1998),
are more controversial (Hoel et al., 1999; Hoel, 2002), and, therefore, left
out of the present investigation.
To take the first element, the negative or unwanted nature of the
behaviour is implicit in most definitions and is generally agreed upon
(Einarsen et al., 2003). Reference is sometimes made to verbal abuse such
as criticism, offensive remarks (Einarsen, 2000a; Zapf, 1999), social isolation
and exclusion (Einarsen and Raknes, 1997; Zapf, 1999) or even physical
violence or threats of such violence (Einarsen and Raknes, 1997; Zapf,
1999). In this respect, a distinction has been made between direct actions,
such as accusations, verbal abuse and indirect actions, rumours, gossiping
and social isolation (e.g. Einarsen et al., 2003; O’Moore et al., 1998).
However, although many researchers do include physical abuse in their
definition of bullying, it is also often explained that the behaviours involved
in workplace bullying are primarily of a psychological rather than physical
nature (Leymann, 1996; Zapf et al., 1996; Einarsen, 1999).
Second, the literature often refers to the frequency and duration of the
behaviour as part of the conceptualization of bullying. Thus, the persist-
ent, repeated and enduring nature of the behaviour is highlighted (e.g.
Einarsen and Skogstad, 1996; Vartia, 1996; Zapf et al., 1996), and bullying
is not described to be about isolated events. Indeed, Leymann (1996)
emphasizes that not all negative behaviours in their own right can be
considered as bullying, but rather they become bullying because of the
persistency of the experience. Equally, according to Hoel et al. (1999) the

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persistency of experience also functions as a separator from the concept of

workplace violence, which it is argued tends to focus on one-off incidents.
Nevertheless, it is suggested by some researchers that in cases of severe
aggression, a one-off act may generate significant long-term effects and
possibly permanently change the relationship between perpetrator and
target, and can in such cases be considered bullying (e.g. Einarsen, 1996;
Hoel and Cooper, 2001). This draws on the idea that the recollection of
the act (prompted by things such as a similar situation, flashbacks or a re-
encounter with the aggressor) can recall memories and/or affect current
behaviour in as powerful a way as the original act.
Third, common to many representations of bullying is the idea of an
imbalance of power between parties that may be present at the outset or
emerge during the cause of the process (Leyman, 1996; Einarsen et al.,
2003). Much of the literature asserts that this imbalance of power frequently
reflects the formal power structure of the organizational context, usually
citing the example of the target being bullied by someone further up the
organizational hierarchy (Einarsen et al., 2003). But more informal power
sources are also explored, such as certain types of knowledge, experience,
access to support (Einarsen, 1999; Hoel and Cooper, 2001), or dependence
of some sort (Niedl, 1995).
Hence, bullying can be downwards (from managers) or sideways, i.e.
bullying from a colleague or a group (Einarsen et al., 2003), and in some
case even upwards. Nevertheless, in the case of Great Britain, most bullying
appears to be downwards (Unison, 1997, 2000; Hoel and Cooper, 2000).
However, within the literature the relationship between the service provider
and customer, a relationship that has frequently been found to contain an
imbalance of power (Zeithamal and Bitner, 1996: 212; Korczynski and Ott,
2004) is hardly mentioned. It could be argued that this omission reflects
the tendency of organizational research to focus on the management–
worker dyad even in the service industries at the expense of what is now
understood as the customer–worker–management triangle (Korczynski,
2002).
Fourth, authors writing on bullying often refer to the effects on, or the
reaction of, the target, either implicitly or explicitly (e.g. Leymann, 1996;
Einarsen and Mikkelsen, 2003; Hoel et al., 2004). It is argued that such
actions may cause severe psychological harm and damage (Einarsen and
Mikkelsen, 2003), and mental and physical pain (Björkqvist et al., 1994).
Specifically, it has been reported that victims of bullying have experienced
impaired well-being, reduced job satisfaction as well as a number of stress
symptoms such as low self-esteem, sleep problems, anxiety, concentration

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difficulties, chronic fatigue and depression (e.g. Einarsen and Mikkelsen,

2003; Vartia, 2001; Zapf et al., 1996).
Finally, central to many definitions, particularly those centred around
targets and their interpretations, has been the stigmatization process of
victims (Bjorkqvist et al., 1994; Leymann, 1996; Zapf, 1999). It is often
asserted that over the course of time, the behaviour of the victim changes
in response to their experience, rendering even third parties’ assessment of
the behaviour as reasonable treatment of a neurotic and difficult person
(Leymann, 1996; Hoel et al., 1999; Einarsen and Mikkelsen, 2003). In turn,
it has been claimed that the effects of this stigmatization make the victim
less able to cope with their job and, thus, become what is termed a more
‘deserving’ target of bullying (Einarsen, 2000a). As Einarsen points out,‘the
stigmatising effects of these activities, and their escalating frequency and
intensity, make the victim constantly less able to cope with his or her daily
tasks and co-operation requirements of the job, thus becoming continually
more vulnerable and “a deserving target”’ (2000a: 8).

RESEARCH METHODS
This article is based on research from a study where multiple methods were
used in order to gather rich, in-depth insights about how frontliners coped
with their experiences of customer abuse and violence in UK job centres.
It was only on analysing the data we had collected (from both interviews
and participant observation) that the issue of customer bullying emerged.
First,, this research drew on 49 semi-structured, in-depth interviews, lasting
from 45 minutes to two hours with most interviews lasting around one
hour. These interviews took place in a private room within the job centre
and were recorded using a tape recorder and then later transcribed by the
researcher herself. In line with the technique of semi-structured interview-
ing, throughout these interviews the researcher drew on a broad guide that
had a framework of topics rather than a predetermined set of questions.
These topics included things such as frontliners’ perceptions of their work
duties and the main purpose of their role, the extent to which they
enjoyed/disliked their work, their experiences of interactions with the
customer, coping mechanisms used to deal with difficult customer inter-
actions, and their perceptions of management support. The aim of using
such a broad guide was to enable the participant to have a hand in shaping
the interview instead of the researcher imposing their abstract conceptual-
ization of frontliners’ experiences onto the interviewee. The participants
consisted of 38 frontline staff, seven job centre managers and four union
activists. For the purpose of this article we considered any employee as a

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‘frontliner’ who dealt with the public and a ‘manager’ as any employee of
a management grade who did not deal with the public. Therefore, through-
out this article, when we are exploring the experiences of negative
customer behaviour and its effects, we largely draw on data taken from
frontliners’ experiences (the main focus of this article). However, wherever
appropriate, we also draw on data from management to show that both
management and frontliners did not label any customer behaviour as
bullying and that both parties were quick to stigmatize the victim.
This research also drew on participant observation that involved a
month observing, shadowing and working with frontliners in a job centre.
This allowed the researcher to experience first hand the day-to-day experi-
ences and behaviour of participants and, if necessary, to talk to them about
their feelings and interpretations. Thus, the researcher was often able to be
a ‘participant-as–observer’, which, according to Burgess (1984), is a
researcher who forms relationships and participates in activities but makes
no secret of the intention to observe events. However, in other situations,
the researcher was only able to be an ‘observer-as-participant’ because of
certain data regulations regarding the privacy of data. The researcher also
attended a training day designed to help frontliners deal with difficult and
violent customers. Here, the frontliner was ‘participant-as observer’ and
completed all the training activities alongside the frontliners. Throughout
all of the observation, the researcher made notes. However, on occasion
where the use of a tape recorder was not too intrusive, the researcher also
tape-recorded conversations that were later transcribed.
The use of both these methods (interviewing and participant observa-
tion) had implications for the data collected. The data generated was varied,
meaning that researcher had to identify key themes that emerged during
the process of data collection and analysis. The subjective nature of these
methods is frequently levelled as a criticism against them because the
researcher’s presence may have an impact on the reality he or she is observ-
ing (Waddington, 1994). However, Waddington (1994) argues that the
longer a researcher is present, the more unusual or exhibitionist behaviour
will disappear. This was borne out by our field research; once the
researcher’s presence had been accepted as legitimate, the effect on partici-
pants’ behaviour seemed minimal and frontliners appeared readily to accept
the researcher’s presence, even inviting her into the canteen with them. The
researcher strived to minimize subjectivity as much as possible by maintain-
ing an open disposition with a willingness to be surprised and by thinking
comparatively; that is by comparing elements of data in order to stay
grounded in the data. However, despite these measures, this research takes

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the position that the nature of qualitative research means that the researcher
will necessarily impact upon the phenomena studied. In taking an inter-
pretevist stance, this subjectivity will necessarily run throughout this study.
The researcher will be subjectively interpreting participants’ accounts using
her version of concepts, theories and literature (Bryman, 2001) just as
participants will give their accounts according to their subjective frame of
reference, on which the researcher will also impact (for a further discussion
see Cassell, 2005).We acknowledge that all we can do is strive to take appro-
priate measures to minimize the subjectivity as much as possible, as outlined
above. However, this method certainly helped our study yield rich data,
through providing deep insights into the field studied.
Non-probability sampling enables a diverse choice of participants who
can provide a varied perspective on their experience of customer behav-
iour. The researcher explained these requirements to the district manager
who then selected job centres according to their differing surroundings. Six
job centres were selected in total from the same district, a county in the
middle of England. Two job centres were set within city centre locations,
two were situated within small towns, one was based in a small village
location and one job centre was located within a small community within
the inner city. Despite the differing contexts, we found no significant
differences between job centres with regards to customer behaviour that
we associate with bullying.
Thirty-eight frontline staff were interviewed, alongside seven job
centre managers and four union activists. Participants were recruited on a
voluntary basis, and interviews were conducted in work time. The project
was explained to the job centre as a whole and then frontliners volunteered.
All participants were assured of their anonymity both verbally when the
researcher was recruiting and through a written letter given to the
participants at the start of the interview.
The sample consisted of 27 females and 22 males. With regard to
ethnicity, 34 identified themselves as Caucasian, 13 as British Asian and two
as African-Caribbean. The predominance of women in frontline positions
in service work is reflected in the over-representation of women in this
sample. Within the ES management grades, the sexes are in approximately
equal proportion and the sample of managers interviewed reflected this. In
the course of the research process, no significant differences emerged from
the data between male and female respondents or between different ethnic
groups; therefore, although we recognize the importance of locating
organizational studies within the organizational power structures (Hearn
and Parkin, 2001), the primary focus of this article is on exploring

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frontliners’ perceptions of certain customer behaviour in the context of a

customer–worker–management relationship per se.
From our interpretive perspective, we do not consider the process of
data collecting and analysing as distinct separate phases but as interconnected
and overlapping. Nonetheless, we did formally analyse data collected from
interviews and participant observation.We used micro-analysis, meaning that
the data were studied paragraph by paragraph, line by line, word by word.
We used a broad template approach (King, 2004) studying the data for
common themes and codes. The data collected from both interviews and
observation was analysed in this way. In order to code the data the computer
software programme NVivo (manufacturer: QSR International) was used.
This allowed the data to be sorted into easily accessible categories, enabled
quick retrieval of data coded according to single or multiple codes, compari-
son of segments and, most importantly, refinement and development of
codes. This software is only an aid to the organization of the material and
is not in itself an interpretive device. Nevertheless, computerization does
allow the researcher to work effectively with large amounts of text and
complex coding schemes facilitating depth and sophistication of analysis.

CUSTOMER BULLYING IN THE EMPLOYMENT SERVICE

In this section, we explore how the different dimensions of workplace
bullying, identified in the literature and discussed above, corresponded to
frontliners’ experiences of certain customer behaviour. We investigate these
dimensions using data from our fieldwork. Although we examine each of
these dimensions separately for ease of understanding, in practice we found
that the customer behaviour and interactive processes often combined most
or all of these elements at once, something that is illustrated in the quotes
used in this article. In fact, all the examples used in this article combined
all of these elements.

Negative and unwanted behaviour

After analysing the data from both the interviews and observation, we found
that frontliners frequently perceived customer behaviour as extremely
negative and unwanted, something that is detailed in the literature (Einarsen
et al., 2003). For example, amongst many things, customer behaviour, was
often reported as ‘offensive’, ‘terrible’, ‘personally insulting’, ‘degrading’,
‘abusive’ and ‘aggressive’. The following quote is an account from a front-
liner in which he describes unwanted, negative customer behaviour. This
quote is representative of our broader data set taken from both interviews
and participant observation:

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I had nothing to do with him for ages and ages and

unfortunately Steve, who no longer works here, saw him most of
the time and unfortunately there was a problem sorting his
money out. Went to the benefits agency and it came back that
he hadn’t paid enough contributions in and he went absolutely
mad . . . because he had been kept waiting five minutes to be
seen, absolutely terrible . . . Still very anti, particularly with Steve
and it got to a stage where Steve would worry about seeing him
although he would insist on only seeing Steve, he was actually
speaking to Steve . . .There was one time Steve sort of finishes
the interview, and this guy produces a tape recorder, he had been
taping the whole conversation . . . he stormed out, wrote a letter
of complaint to the District Manager, and to the Operations
Manager and had an interview with them. Then Steve had to go
and see his manager who had had a meeting with the district
manager . . . Anyway, three months passed, the guy’s carrying on
being offensive, working away, Steve leaves. Steve asked to be
transferred to Market Harborough and I am sure that was part of
it. Anyway, the guy makes another claim . . . and all of a sudden
he’s seeing me to do fortnightly interventions . . . And the long
and short of it is that he has always got on well with me . . . he
was Ok with more or less every other member of staff, I think it
was just Steve that he had the problem with.
In this quote we see that the frontliner describes the customer behaviour
in this incident explicitly negatively, for example using the words ‘anti’,
‘offensive’ and ‘absolutely terrible’. He also highlights that he perceives that
these behaviours were unwanted by the target (Steve). Similarly, another
frontliner recounts negative and unwanted behaviour from a customer first
hand:
Well I have this mad old woman that comes in, sometimes she
has her dog in a pram, she’s not right in the head. She always
wants to see me, and then after waiting she makes things difficult
as possible . . . I mean honestly . . . she has even threatened me
. . . I know she is all bluff, but I still get butterflies all morning
before she comes in . . .

Frequency and duration of behaviour

Frontline staff often described the negative behaviour as happening on a
regular and frequent basis. It was reported that certain difficult customers

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made sure that they saw the same frontliner every time they had to come
into the job centre, which because of signing procedures was usually once
every two weeks. Sometimes, frontliners even claimed that customers came
in more frequently than was necessary to ‘make life difficult’ for them.
Indeed, the researcher personally observed one customer who would come
in every day and wait in long, slow-moving queues just to see the same
member of staff. On seeing the frontliner, he would start cursing at him.
The persistent and enduring nature of the customer behaviour was also
captured in the following quote:
I remember this so clearly, and I called him over, and he came
over and he just sat, and I knew as soon as he sat down, that he
was just going to be a pain . . . Because he had a face on him,
and he had this really bad attitude and basically he did say that
he wanted to get a job and that we weren’t giving him enough
help. So I basically gave him all the help I could, but all he did
was moan and was abusive the whole time but I had to put him
on caseload and so I had to see him every two weeks and it got
to the stage where he was coming in every day and seeing me
without appointments and was demanding that he be seen and
sometimes, I would be sat there with him for an hour, trying to
help him, and the whole time he was saying yes I want a job, but
he was saying well I don’t want this, I don’t want that, and very
abusive, very arrogant, not a nice character really. It got so bad I
used to worry about coming to work. That carried on for six
months.

Imbalance of power
Within the ES, frontliners frequently pointed out that no matter how rude
the customer was to them they were still expected to be polite back and
continue to give good customer service, demonstrating a perceived imbal-
ance of power tilted in favour of the customer. There is much evidence
for this imbalance of power within the customer–frontliner relationship
within the service literature (e.g. see Hochschild, 1983). This was particu-
larly noticeable in customer behaviour that manifested itself in what we
have labelled as customer bullying, when it was apparent to the observer
that it was difficult for the frontline staff to defend themselves (or respond
in a way that they ideally would have liked to). Thus, the notion of
customer sovereignty actually contributes to reinforcing the imbalance by
removing or at least reducing the target’s response options. The following

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passage is taken from a frontliner who highlights this inequity, which makes
it hard for him to respond in the way he would like to, in order to defend
himself:
Yeah there are instances where you think customer service is
over stated. Yes, you strive to do the best you can for every
client, well that’s my view of customer service. Although
sometimes, when you get a client who upsets you, I probably
don’t give my best, why should I? But I suppose I do still have to
smile and take it because you can’t give it back.
Or as another frontliner pointed out:
the customer looks you in the eye and is rude to you, and you
have to accept it and be pleasant; that angers me immeasurably.

Negative effects of bullying

As well as perceiving customer behaviours in ways that reflect common
conceptualizations of bullying within the research community, frontliners
also described effects of customer behaviour as similar to many outcomes
listed in the bullying literature. Particularly common effects reported were
anxiety in carrying out one’s job at work and reduced job satisfaction,
although anger and depression were also cited. For example, in one inter-
view, a frontliner recounted an experience with a customer that left him
off sick with depression. Although he pointed out that when working with
the public ‘you get told that you are various forms of low life throughout
the day’, he claimed that it was being targeted by one particular customer
that ‘really affected me . . . every week . . . so things went wrong for me at
that particular stage’. Equally, a different frontliner talked about a customer
who she routinely dealt with:
My husband says that I am always grouchy on a Tuesday night
before she signs. I know, I know, but I can’t help it, I dread her
coming in . . . I tried to tell my manager . . . but, well, it never
gets [taken] seriously.
The quote above illustrates that the negative effects of the behaviour had
crossed over to the frontliner’s home life. This reflects other service workers’
experiences of the negative effects of such customer behaviour. For
example, another service worker explained to the researcher in the canteen
that she experienced similar negative effects from a certain customer. She
detailed how the effects of the customer behaviour were spilling over into

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her home life, through an anxiety that the customer would find out where
she lived and harass her children (something that the customer had threat-
ened). She also emphasized that this had caused her to feel anxious at work
when she was dealing with other customers.

Stigmatization of victims
Finally, frontline staff (as well as management) often blamed targets or
victims for their own misfortune and this contributed to stigmatize them,
a characteristic often reported in the literature (Leymann, 1996; Unison,
1997; Hoel et al., 1999). Moreover, frontliners often blamed each other for
negative customer behaviour by implying that their customer service skills
or lack of such skills were responsible. The following quote from a front-
liner helps provide an example of this, when she blames and stigmatizes a
target of customer behaviour:
Well I always say, it depends on how you treat people, like Janet
with Mr Smith, he’s not the first . . . I do think that you need a
level of customer service.
This quote is representative of other frontliners’ opinions about victims of
what we have termed bullying, where service workers tended to attribute
blame to the victim and hence contribute to stigmatizing them. Equally,
management also tended to blame frontliners for any problems that they
experienced with a customer (including behaviour that we term customer
bullying). For example, a manager explained to the researcher, in an
informal chat, that some frontliners ‘bring it on themselves’ and that a
certain frontliner who was having difficulties with a particular customer
(who was acting in ways that we associate with bullying) was incompetent
at her job. Data taken from participant observation showed that staff
training was another factor that contributed to or facilitated stigmatization
by promoting the idea that once service workers had been trained in
customer handling skills, they should cease to experience any problems
from customers. For example, the trainer described how poor customer
service skills, (e.g. poor listening abilities, poor signposting, poor confirma-
tion of the facts, poor labelling) could trigger customer anger. Therefore,
when frontliners did experience negative behaviour, it was seen as their
fault.
However surprisingly, although frontliners perceived customer behav-
iours and the effects of these behaviours in ways that reflect current under-
standing of workplace bullying within the research community (as shown
above), they did not themselves label this behaviour as bullying; rather,

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when frontliners experienced these negative customer behaviours they

described them as ‘part of the job’. Thus, customer behaviour commonly
identified with bullying, was seen as a normal part of this type of service
work by frontline staff. For example, a frontliner told the researcher about
a customer that she labelled a ‘stalker’ who often came in to stare at her.
However, she stressed that she just got on with it and accepted it as part of
the job. Equally, the researcher observed frontliners routinely putting up
with difficult customers, including what we would term as bullying behav-
iour. The following quote from a frontliner also points to this idea:
Since we merged with the employment service the customer is
always right. Management won’t back you up, so what’s the
point? I just get on with it, sign them and get them out. Clients
can be nasty, certain clients can be the bane of your life, but I
guess that’s part of the job these days, it wasn’t always . . . but I
guess now . . . you work with the public, what do you expect?
Similarly, a union representative made the following comment with respect
to aggressive and violent customer behaviour in general:
all part of the job, and you will hear managers say,‘Right, if you
can’t put up with this, you shouldn’t be doing the job . . .’, and
that’s it, and that’s a widely held view these days – which I think
is true in many occupations, unfortunately.
Contradicting frontliners’ own appraisal of customer behaviour and
showing the importance of context (Lazarus, 1993), frontliners did refer to
similar interactions with managers as bullying. For example, one frontliner
commented that they thought that the appraisal system was used by
managers as ‘a means to use their position to bully members of their team
that they don’t like’. In one particular job centre, frontliners were apt to
refer to the previous behaviour of one manager towards a frontliner as
bullying. Frontliners gave examples of his bullying behaviour including
constantly moving the target’s lunch hour and singling her out for
criticism. The victim herself explained:
Anyway, so it all sort of backfired on me . . . I wouldn’t
apologise you see. That’s when he started to be, well, a bully,
yeah. First he gave me a grade C on my appraisal when I always
get a grade A – this meant that my pay went down. As a result of
this grade, he took me off the waiting list for promotion
meaning that I would have to re-apply and go through panel

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procedure again. All this happened over a couple of months. He

used to often criticize me in front of my team and talk about
how I wasn’t helping with the target and he would say ‘you’re a
management pay band and you should start acting like a
management pay band’. He would always class me as negative,
but I learned to keep my mouth shut. It got to the stage when I
would be dreading coming in, I mean a real bully. At the end of
the day that was a large part of me coming to this team, which
as it turns out, I am very happy.

In the above quote, the manager’s behaviour is clearly labelled as bullying.

We can see that it contains many of the elements or characteristics preva-
lent in the literature that we have discussed above. First, the manager’s
behaviour is described as negative and unwanted. Second, the frontliner
emphasizes frequency and persistency when she points out that a number
of acts happened over several months and that his criticism was something
that happened ‘often’. Third, the imbalance of power is apparent through
his ability to affect not only her current working life and pay, but also future
promotion possibilities. Equally, we can see that she suffered negative effects
in that she was starting to dread coming to her workplace. The frontliner
perceived and labelled such behaviour as bullying (as did others in the job
centre) despite not labelling customer behaviour as such.

THE NATURE OF CUSTOMER SERVICE WORK AND CUSTOMER BULLYING

Through the above analysis, it is clear that although frontliners did refer to
management behaviour as bullying, they were reticent to do so with regards
to customer behaviour. In fact, out of 49 qualitative interviews, not one
organizational member referred to customer behaviour in this way. This
article now turns to exploring possible reasons for this contradiction. We
argue that service workers do not label the experience as bullying because
of the nature of customer service work in the job centre and because of
both organizational factors surrounding the nature of customer service
work and also wider social representations around the current conceptual-
izations of workplace bullying.
In this section, we take the five key defining characteristics of bullying
identified in the literature (cited above) and examine each one in turn to
discuss how the nature of customer service work helps foster conditions
that exacerbate or facilitate such behaviour and consequent processes. In
this way, we are examining the enabling organizational structures with
regards to bullying (Salin, 2003). This builds up a picture of service work

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where negative customer behaviour (including that frequently identified

with bullying) comes to be seen as part of customer service work and this
is not labelled as bullying.
In exploring the first dimension, the nature of the behaviour, staff often
explained that unwanted and hostile customer behaviour frequently arose
because of the frontliner’s inability to give the customer the service they
desired (usually because of requests for money or time). This idea is
supported by research done by Yagil (2001) who argues that when service
quality is weak, customers become more assertive. This type of unwanted
customer behaviour was illustrated through the first quote in this article.
Here, the frontliner maintained that negative customer behaviour arose
from what the customer considered as poor service. This caused the
customer to use his ‘sovereignty rights’ and complain to the district
manager. Similarly, in the second quote, according to the frontliner the
negative behaviour started because the customer felt that ‘they weren’t
giving me enough help’. In these examples we can see how the nature of
customer service work underlies the customer behaviour described as
negative by the above member of staff.
The second dimension common to definitions of bullying in the litera-
ture is frequency and persistency of behaviours. The nature of customer
service work often means that frontliners have to serve customers on a regular
basis, allowing for bullying behaviour to become a regular occurrence.
Although customer–frontline encounters are often perceived as ‘one-off ’ in
nature, in practice many frontline positions require contact with individual
customers who return on a regular basis. Equally, the nature of customer
service work means that each time they serve a new customer, the potential
threat of further anti-social behaviour can cause them to re-experience
previous encounters, in a similar way to sufferers of post-traumatic stress
disorder (PTSD) (Leymann and Gustafsson, 1996; Mikkelsen and Einarsen,
2002). The repeated customer contact, a unique feature of customer service
work, may exacerbate the negative experience of this type of customer
behaviour. With regards to the experience of violence, Hearn and Parkin
point out that once violence has been carried out,a reference to that violence
(verbally by a look, a slight movement or some other cue or clue) may be
enough to connotate violence to the victim and the modification of
(material) behaviour (Hearn and Parkin,2001: xii).In the same way,customer
bullying (another organizational violation), may be re-lived and re-experi-
enced frequently when dealing with other customers because of the simi-
larity of the interaction (despite the customer behaving in ways that strictly
speaking do not fit commonly agreed definitions of bullying).

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This idea can be seen in the following quote:

Well you have the experience of being stared at by grown
adults, and you know, you can’t help but think of a particular
client which gives you grief . . . and it shouldn’t because you
should judge each customer, but you know, well sometimes you
can’t help but think of it and question . . . what is going to
happen today?
The third dimension, the imbalance of power is also facilitated through
the nature of customer service work. This dimension must be understood in
light of the three-sided relationship of the customer–worker–management
triangle.Within the service industries there are ‘dual logics’ at work meaning
that alongside the need for rationalization, routinization and efficiency, on
one hand, there is a need to be (or at least appear to be) focused/orientated
around the all-important customer (Korczynski, 2002). Therefore, an imbal-
ance of power is partly established and maintained through the customer
sovereignty ideology (the idea that ‘the customer is king’). This power imbal-
ance was manifested in the ES in a number of ways including the regular
occurrence with which management supported customers involved in
conflicts with frontliners, even to the extent where the manager would break
organizational rules to facilitate the customer’s request. For example, giving
an additional benefit payment, even when they admitted that they felt that
the customer was not entitled.Typically,the manager’s concern was with iden-
tifying where the frontliner had gone ‘wrong’ when they had upset a
customer, instead of concern with the frontliner’s feelings.
Additionally, according to the literature, the nature of service work
creates an imbalance of power because the client has a certain amount of
leverage in customer service interactions (Prottas, 1979). Prottas (1979)
contends that the client can stand a fair amount of tension during the
meeting because it is a fairly infrequent occurrence. In contrast, the
employee does it day in, day out, and so they cannot stand such tension all
the time. Prottas asserts that this will lead to the frontliner compromising
their own needs to fulfil the demands of clients in order to reduce conflict
and get through the day. The following quote from a frontliner helps
illustrate this point when he emphasizes that for the amount he is paid, he
wants an easy life, which involves not upsetting the customer:
When all is said and done, I don’t want to upset or antagonize
anyone. I am certainly not paid enough . . . Just want to get
them in and done as quickly as possible.

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Finally, stigmatization of the target of bullying is another characteristic of

bullying within the literature that is enabled by the nature of customer
service work.Within the ES the concept of ‘good customer service’ and the
skills that this is purported to entail sometimes contributed to stigmatize the
victim. Through policies, procedures, training and management rhetoric,
the notion was constructed in the ES that a ‘good’ frontliner was one with
good customer service skills and one who developed and maintained good
relations with the customer. In fact, this logic was taken further to imply that
frontliners should be able to avoid all types of negative customer behaviour
(including what we have termed bullying and even other customer behav-
iour that frontliners perceived to be violent) through their skilful handling
of the customer. In this way, negative customer behaviour, in general, was
seen as the frontliner’s fault. For example, a manager commented that:
There are times when, sometimes, there can be words or actions
by members of staff that can provoke something that could have
been diffused.
Or another manager explained:
I always say treat people how you want to be treated . . . if you
don’t have customer service and you don’t treat clients with
respect . . . then that’s what causes problems. That’s when you
start getting agro in the office.
Although frontlines more generally tended to blame each others’ service
skills for a range of negative customer behaviour, they particularly seemed
to stigmatize victims of repeated negative behaviour or bullying. For
example a frontliner explained:
If she’d just act a bit different . . . If you’d seen the way that
Joyce dealt with them [customers], then you’d know why she has
Mr Scrivens on her case . . .
As well as blaming the victim for the customer’s behaviour, they also often
withdrew their support. This idea is manifest in the next quote from
another frontliner who talked about what we perceive as bullying behav-
iour between customer Mr Scrivens and frontliner Joyce already mentioned
above:
She just goes on and on, yeah, we all have a good moan in the
canteen you know, but Joyce . . . just don’t get her started on Mr
Scrivens, no.

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DISCUSSION
In our research, we carried out an in-depth exploration of the concept of
customer bullying, something that to our knowledge has not been
examined to such an extent before. We found that behaviour that in other
contexts may be considered as bullying was in this context understood as
part of the job. Although frontliners did not identify this behaviour as
bullying, they did perceive and experience it in ways that are consistent
with the bullying literature. Customer behaviour was seen as negative and
unwanted, experienced over a period of time, took place within an unequal
relationship and caused the frontliner to experience negative effects. We
also found that both frontliners and management contributed to a stigma-
tization of the victims. We argue that the nature of customer service work
itself will contribute to and facilitate frontliners’ interpretations of such
customer behaviour as part of the job and thus acceptable. Many of the
specific conditions of customer service work that were found to facilitate
frontliners’ understandings of this behaviour are also present in many other
service organizations. This suggests that this type of behaviour that we have
labelled as bullying is likely to be widespread, but not identified as such,
across many service organizations.
However, this article also proposes that although organizational factors
such as the nature of customer service work will impact upon frontliners’
interpretation of customer behaviour, it also suggests that the expert
conceptualization (academics/trade unions/media) and use of the term
‘workplace bullying’ will also have an impact on frontliners’ interpretation
of customer behaviour, affecting what they consider as bullying. Indeed,
interestingly, in our study no frontliner labelled their experience as bullying,
whereas in contrast, in a study by Hoel and Cooper (2000) 8 percent of
targets of bullying identified a client or a customer as the perpetrator. There
may be methodological reasons for this discrepancy. We suggest that this
labelling of participants’ experience as bullying may have been triggered by
the survey design and the fact that respondents were presented with a defi-
nition of bullying and asked to consider the extent to which their own
experiences fitted such a label. By contrast, the method used in our article
did not bring the term ‘bullying’ into the equation unless the respondents
did.
There is considerable evidence that the identification and exploration
of the concept of workplace bullying by academics with regards to
management behaviour has already impacted on organizational practices
(e.g. Rayner et al., 2002; Hubert, 2003) and has affected organizational
members’ consciousness (see Liefooghe and Olafsson, 1999; Lewis, 2000).

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By introducing an alternative interpretation of this behaviour as ‘bullying’

we aim to widen current understandings of bullying within the academic
literature. It is likely that current conceptualizations within the academic
literature may have impacted upon the organizational interpretation of this
concept, including how employees understand the possibilities for inter-
preting customer behaviour. Workplace bullying is an emerging and
developing representation (Liefooghe and Olafsson, 1999) that currently
does not seem to include the notion that customer behaviour can be
bullying. This tendency to limit conceptualizations of bullying to worker
and management relations may reflect common preoccupations with
analysing organizations solely through the dyadic management–worker
relationship. Indeed, bullying literature has primarily focused on the social
relationship within the confines of the organization. However, the increase
in service work means that within this context employment must be seen
as being potentially influenced by a three way relationship involving not
only workers and management but also customers (Korczynski, 2002).
Another possible reason why customer behaviour has not been labelled as
bullying is the tendency of the literature to focus on the longevity of
bullying scenarios. The transient nature of many customer–employee
relationships may have led researchers into bullying to ignore such relation-
ships. However, there are many circumstances where the service worker–
client/customer interaction is of a more long-term nature. For example,
our research has shown that even when the relationship is generally
considered transient, it may develop into an ongoing relationship when a
customer is determined to continue abusive interactions by consciously
targeting individual service providers. Moreover, where the experience is
particularly unexpected or painful, it may produce fear and a learnt set of
reactions in as much that the behaviour does not need to be repeated for
the effect to last – indeed in some cases the sheer sight or thought of a
previous aggressor may recall memories of the act as powerful as the act
itself (Randall, 1997; Hoel, 2002). Therefore, for some service providers,
working on the frontline with other customers may cause them to
continually re-live their experience of bullying.
By identifying customer behaviour as bullying it is hoped that this
interpretation may be able to widen understandings of workplace bullying
and influence organizational members’ understandings of certain customer
behaviour as bullying and therefore unacceptable. We would hope that by
interpreting certain forms of customer behaviour in this way changes may
occur in the organizational context in the form of organizational measures
that set limits on customer behaviour, in a similar way to other workplace

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bullying policies. However, this leads onto the important point that what
we have termed as bullying behaviour is only part of a range of negative
customer behaviour that is routinely accepted by service employees as part
of customer service work (for example see Hochschild, 1983; Taylor and
Tyler, 2000). By constantly focusing on the customer and treating them as
‘king’, the customers’ needs become prioritized over the frontliners’ needs
and feelings. Indeed Yagil and Zur (2007) argue that this imbalance of
power exacerbates burnout in service work.Although this idea of customer
sovereignty is often understood as a ‘façade’ created by management
(Korczynski and Ott, 2004), it is frontliners who are expected to uphold
this front, which frequently includes accepting much negative customer
behaviour as part of their job. In fact, the question arises over the extent
that service organizations use the customer orientation in service work to
force frontliners to accept negative work conditions in general. More
exploratory research is needed in this area.
Finally, our prioritization of one interpretation of customer behaviour
as bullying raises several important issues. Foremost is the question of why
we as ‘experts’ should feel able to pronounce that certain understandings of
customer behaviour (as bullying) should be privileged over other under-
standings of customer behaviour (that it is ‘part of the job’). It is import-
ant to note here that we are not arguing that one understanding is the
correct one whilst the other is incorrect, merely that we are putting forward
an alternative interpretation of certain customer behaviours in line with
common understandings in the literature (Mama, 1995). We believe that
social knowledge leads to social action, and therefore we put forward an
interpretation of customer actions in a bid to portray this behaviour as
unacceptable in the hope that this may impact upon organizational treat-
ment of this type of behaviour, meaning that this behaviour will no longer
be tolerated in the workplace. Overall, however, this study has served to
emphasize the subjective nature of bullying and the existence of multiple
interpretations.
However, if we argue that bullying is a subjective concept that will vary
according to individual interpretations, how can we argue for collective,
protective organizational measures and policies? In responding to this
dilemma, we would argue that within organizations there is a need to take
a fairly pragmatic approach and use moral and political judgements to try
to represent broadly shared organizational understandings (Burr, 1998;
Parker, 1998; Willig, 2001) and base organizational policies on these.
However, we acknowledge that the content of such policies and, even
more, their applications would be contested territory, in which the power

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balance between employer and employees and their representatives would

play an important part (Hoel and Beale, 2006).
Although we believe that bullying is a subjective, constructed concept
we do not claim that any social event can be constructed as bullying; rather,
we take a position that is ontologically realist, asserting that there are
concrete social events underlying what has been understood as bullying.
These underlying concrete events will set limitations as to what can be
understood as bullying, so although understandings will vary, these under-
lying events set certain confines to these variations. In line with this, we
take the position that extreme relativism, that is, including anything as
bullying, renders the concept meaningless. By coming to mean everything
it ends up meaning nothing (Parker, 1998). We argue, instead, for the
importance of an ongoing dialogue between management and frontliners
so that organizations can form policies that are based on emphasis of
common elements (as opposed to differences) of understandings that can
be used to set limits on customer behaviour. However, it is important to
point out that, within this view, we must inevitably make and defend our
judgments from within our own culturally and historically located value
systems (Burr, 1998). Critics of this pragmatic view argue that these judge-
ments are likely to be in the advocator’s interests, disguising themselves as
‘social conscience’. Although in the academic world it may be possible to
argue that pragmatists are no more hedonistic or self-serving than other
theorists (Burr, 1998: 25), within organizations there may be more of a
conflict of interests. Employees may feel pressurized to voice views about
customer behaviours that are consistent with the views of those in mana-
gerial positions. Knowledge and social action go together, leading to
particular forms of action and away from others. Given the dominance of
certain understandings and the subordination of others, subsequent action
will work in the interests of groups that are more powerful and against
those in weaker, more precarious positions (Burr, 1995). The evidence of
customer bullying provided in this article suggests the need for an active
workforce voice within service organizations. In this respect, having a
visible – and influential – union presence in the workplace to support
frontliners could help to address and counteract experiences commonly
associated with bullying.
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Victoria Bishop, PhD, is a lecturer at Manchester Business School, Manchester University, UK.
Address: Manchester Business School, Manchester University, Booth Street West, Manchester,
M15 6PB, UK. [email: victoria.bishop@manchester.ac.uk]

Helge Hoel, PhD, is a lecturer at Manchester Business School, Manchester University, UK.
Address: Manchester Business School, Manchester University, Booth Street West, Manchester,
M15 6PB, UK. [email: helge.hoel@manchester.ac.uk]

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