Shameful? Grateful? : Emotional Response to Customer Helping and Its Impact on Job Stress and Job Performance

Abstract

The impact of customer helping on service providers is a controversial issue. Experimental evidence examines that customer helping enhances employees job performance

however, there is also empirical evidence that customer helping increases job stress. The purpose of this paper is to bridge the gap between the conflicting consequences of customer helping. Through the qualitative and quantitative research, this paper delineates how (1) employees feeling shame and gratitude toward the customer helping relate to job stress and job performance and (2) the effects of customer helping on emotional responses depend on employees mental simulation (outcome vs. process). The results show that feeling shame toward the customer helping leads to job stress and job performance, whereas feeling gratitude increases job performance. Moreover, the employees mental simulation had significant moderating effect, but only when the level of customer helping is high.