The conventional advice for salespeople facing angry customer complaints is to remain calm and
provide high-quality service. Yet salespeople’s willingness and ability to do so depends on whether
they believe the customer is justified in complaining with an angry tone. Using an experimental design
with salespeople as participants, this study shows that salespeople experience greater anger when they
blame someone other than themselves for causing the service failure. Furthermore, when customers
complain in an angry tone and salespeople believe others are responsible for the service failure,
salespeople feel greater anger, perceive more emotional labor, develop stronger revenge intentions,
and express less commitment to serving customers. Although organizations sometimes consider
customer complaints beneficial, the current study shows that when customers complain in an angry
tone, salespeople often feel like providing poorer service, both to that customer and to others.