Being Difficult: Customers’ Sensemaking of Their Deviant Behavior

Abstract

Customers constantly deviate from social norms in their interactions with service employees. Previous research has explored customers’ deviance from the service employee’s viewpoint, overlooking the customers’ own perspective of their deviance. Based on interviews, we present a model of customers’ individual and social sensemaking of their deviant behavior in service interactions. Customers frame their behavior as inseparable from script violations by the service provider. Deviance is viewed as a justified act of taking charge to substitute an unmotivated or incapable service provider. Social sensemaking tends to validate such behavior by providing approval, thereby reinforcing norms of deviance in service.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dana Yagil

DANA YAGIL is an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Services at the University of Haifa. She received her Ph.D. in psychology from the Bar-Ilan University. She studies organizational behavior. Her current research interests include authenticity, emotions, and role identities.

Gil Luria

GIL LURIA is a Senior Lecturer in the faculty of social welfare and health sciences in the Department of Human Services at the University of Haifa. He received his Ph.D. from the Faculty of Management at the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology. He conducts research on organizational climate, leadership, stress, and organizational interventions, with an emphasis on service quality and safety. His studies have been published in scientific and professional journals, and adopted by practitioners in a number of organizations. His recent work focuses on employee and customer behavior in organizations.