The development and validation of a customer incivility scale

Abstract

Little research has examined sources of workplace incivility outside of the organization. Customer-employee interactions are important to study, however, because most employees interact with customers more than with supervisors and coworkers (Dormann & Zapf, 2004) and evidence suggests that deviance is more common from those outside (vs. inside) the organization (Grandey, Kern, & Frone, 2007; Schat & Kelloway, 2005). Employee-customer interactions are governed by different policies, and are often short term and non-reoccurring. The purpose of these encounters also differs from employee-employee interactions. Given these differences, current workplace incivility scales--designed to assess intra-organizational incivility--may not be appropriate to assess customer incivility. Thus, I conducted two studies to develop and initially validate a customer incivility scale. Study 1 used focus groups of retail and restaurant employees ( N =30) to elicit a list of uncivil customer behaviours, based on which 27 initial scale items were written. Study 2 used a correlational survey approach ( N = 92) to garner initial evidence for the scale's psychometric properties. The scale demonstrated high internal consistency. Weak to moderate correlations with other customer deviance measures (i.e., justice, aggression, violence) provided evidence for discriminant validity. Significant relationships between the scale and employee job satisfaction, turnover intentions, job-related strain, and general psychological strain provided evidence for criterion-related validity. The scale thus demonstrates promising psychometric qualities, although it needs further validation and refinement.