Engaged customers as job resources or demands for frontline employees?

Purpose This paper proposes and empirically tests a theoretical model on how different customer engagement behaviors (CEBs), such as giving feedback and helping other customers, affect the role stress–job strain relationship among frontline employees. Design/methodology/approach Drawing from the job demands-resources model, this paper hypothesizes that some CEBs weaken the role stress–job strain relationship among frontline employees, whereas the opposite holds for other CEBs. To test these hypotheses, the study involved a survey among 279 frontline employees in 20 nursing home teams in Belgium. Findings The results reveal that the impact of role stress on job strain is stronger when frontline employees notice more helping behaviors among customers and weaker when frontline employees receive more customer feedback or notice that customers spread positive word of mouth about the nursing home. Originality/value This research contributes to the customer engagement and frontline employee literature by showing that CEBs can act as both job demands and job resources for frontline employees.