Customer Service Evaluations of Employees With Disabilities: The Roles of Perceived Competence and Service Failure

Although employees with disabilities represent a significant percentage of the American hospitality labor force, they often face workplace discrimination. Despite this reality, no research has examined whether customer service evaluations are affected by employees with visible disabilities and the mechanisms behind why and when customer service evaluations can be negatively impacted by employee disability status. This is a significant gap in the literature focusing on disability discrimination because customers—through their customer service evaluations—play a significant role in the evaluation of hospitality employees. Therefore, the current article examined if employee disability status (i.e., does or does not have a disability) influences customer service evaluations using experimental methods in which a hotel service experience is performed by an employee who does or does not have a disability. The current research found that (a) customers do evaluate hospitality employees with disabilities lower than employees without disabilities, (b) customer service evaluations are negatively impacted by employee disability status because they are perceived as less competent than employees without disabilities, and (c) customers are more likely to do so in the presence of a service failure.