Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jretconser Employee display of burnout in the service encounter and its impact on customer satisfaction Magnus Söderlund ⁎ Center for Consumer Marketing, Stockholm School of Economics, P.O. Box 6501, SE-113 83 Stockholm, Sweden ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Service encounters Emotional display behaviors Employee burnout Employee happiness Service performance Customer satisfaction ABSTRACT This study examines if employee display of burnout symptoms in service encounters has an impact on customer satisfaction. An experimental approach was used in which the employee's display of burnout (absent vs. present) and the service performance level (low vs. high) were the manipulated factors. The results show that employee display of burnout had a negative impact on customer satisfaction, that this effect was mediated by customers’ appraisals of the employee's emotional state, and that the effect was stronger under the condition of low service performance. 1. Introduction Work comprising face-to-face encounters with customers is chal- lenging, because it involves balancing a complex set of demands from co-workers, managers, and customers. At the same time, many employees who deal with customers are poorly paid, undertrained, and sometimes abused by customers (Chen and Kao, 2012; Zemke and Anderson, 1990). It is not surprising, then, that customer contact employees run the risk of job burnout (Cho et al., 2013; Cordes and Dougherty, 1993; Lings et al., 2014; Singh et al., 1994; Singh, 2000; Yagil, 2006; Yavas et al., 2013). The toxic consequences of burnout, a negatively charged state of exhaustion and emotional depletion (Grandey et al., 2012), are well- documented at the individual employee level. They include (a) mental and physical health problems such as depression, anxiety, distress, decreased self-esteem, fatigue, and insomnia (Chen and Kao, 2012; Cordes and Dougherty, 1993; Kristensen et al., 2005; Maslach et al., 2001; Schaufeli et al., 2008); (b) deterioration of social and family relationships (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993; Maslach et al., 2001); and (c) dysfunctional outcomes in the individual's relation to the employer, such as lower organizational commitment, more absenteeism, reduced job satisfaction, intentions to leave, and attenuated job performance (Babakus et al., 1999; Chen and Kao, 2012; Cho et al., 2013; Cordes and Dougherty, 1993; Deery et al., 2002; Han et al., 2016; Karl and Peluchette, 2006; Kristensen et al., 2005; Low et al., 2001; Maslach et al., 2001, Schaufeli et al., 2008; Singh, 2000; Singh et al., 1994; Taris, 2006). Given such consequences, it is unlikely that employees with high levels of burnout would be able to produce a positive experience for the customers with whom they interact. Some existing studies suggest that this is indeed the case, thus implying that employee burnout has implications not only from a human relations perspective but also from a marketing perspective in which the customer's reactions are in focus. For example, Singh (2000) found a negative association between service employee burnout and performance quality, a dependent variable that included some customer-related aspects. Yagil (2012), who examined dyads of first-line service employees and customers, identified a negative association between service employee burnout and customer satisfaction. Similar results have also been obtained for health care employees and patients (Argentero et al., 2008; Garman et al., 2002). It should be noted, however, that these studies were based on (a) employees’ self-ratings of burnout, (b) assessments of the burnout-customer evaluation association in aggregated terms (i.e., the aggregated history of employee-customer interactions), and (c) questionnaire data without a clear time asymmetry between cause and effect variables. In the present study, we apply a different perspective to the link between employee burnout and customer reactions. First, given that burnout is a variable that can take on values ranging from low to high, we assume that contemporary customers are more likely to encounter employees with relatively mild levels of burnout rather than employees with burnout at such critical levels that they would require treatment and even hospitalization. Second, we assume that burnout symptoms at the relatively mild level are likely to “leak” in service encounters (i.e., clues about the employee's state are transmitted to the customer through employee behaviors), and that such leaks influence customers’ http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2016.10.014 Received 6 May 2016; Received in revised form 28 September 2016; Accepted 28 October 2016 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: Magnus.Soderlund@hhs.se. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 37 (2017) 168–176 Available online 04 November 2016 0969-6989/ © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. MARK