“The customer is not always right”: Frontline employees’ perspective and coping with illegitimate customer complaints

Although customer complaints are valued and serve as a critical feedback and as the improvement of service quality there is an increasingly large number of incidents when customers complain deliberately and incorrectly. The behavior of such complaining customers represents a serious and important problem for hospitality industry. This research paper touches upon the investigation of the illegitimate customer complaints in the hospitality industry from the perspective of frontline employees. A questionnaire was distributed to 78 frontline employees of 6 luxury hotels in Dubrovnik area. The questionnaire was used to measure perspective and coping of the participants with illegitimate customer complaining behavior. Findings of this research suggest and can serve as a plan to develop more effective coping methods and training programs on how to deal with illegitimate customer complaining behavior incidents