An important gap in the customer mistreatment literature is understanding how employees’ affective reactions can be modified to decrease negative affective reactions. The current study draws from affective events theory to examine how customer-focused perspective-taking, or employees taking the customer’s point of view, can modify employees’ affective reactions to customer mistreatment. Withholding customer compensation was examined as an outcome of customer-focused perspective-taking, and anger and empathy were examined as mediators. A two-group (customer-focused perspective-taking: yes or no) experimental design examined the between-subjects effect of customer-focused perspective-taking among 128 frontline managers. The results indicate mediation of anger and empathy between perspective-taking and customer compensation, supporting customer-focused perspective-taking as an intervention to help employees maximize service delivery. The most important theoretical contribution of the article is showing that by interrupting the affective events theory process at a within-person level, affective reactions and episodic performance can be modified when reacting to customer mistreatment.

客户虐待文献中的一个重要空白是了解如何修改员工的情感反应以减少负面情感反应。当前的研究是从情感事件理论出发的，旨在检验以客户为中心的观点采择或员工以客户的观点为根据，如何改变员工对客户虐待的情感反应。作为以客户为中心的观点调查的结果，对代扣代缴客户的款项进行了审查，而对愤怒和同情心的审查则作为调解人进行了审查。两组（以客户为中心的观点接受：是或否）实验设计检查了128位一线经理在以客户为中心的观点接受的主体间效果。结果表明调解观点和客户补偿之间的愤怒和同情心，支持以客户为中心的观点采择，以帮助员工最大化地提供服务。这篇文章最重要的理论贡献是，通过在个人层面上中断情感事件的理论过程，可以对客户的不当对待做出改变情感反应和情节表现的过程。