In service encounters problems may arise because customers and company representatives alike bring preconceived notions and expectations to the interaction. Role play data about customer complaints help to reveal what participants’ expected or normative behaviour would be, according to their respective roles as customer and company representative. Compared to actual complaints, it transpires that emotional involvement plays an important role in conflict management, and is expressed not only through factual information, but is conveyed to a large extent on a meta-level, through facial expressions, gestures, and tone of voice, factors of which the interactants are usually unaware.

A cognitive-pragmatic analysis of complaints in service encounters shows that emotional involvement is central to the conflict solving process and influences the manner in which participants conceive each other and their attitude towards the interaction. From the customer’s point of view, a company representative will have to express a carefully balanced degree of empathy and personal emotional detachment, as well as the sincere wish to solve the problem at hand. From the perspective of the company representative, it is important to maintain a balance between the constraints of the company policy, the wish for repeat custom, and his or her own personal emotional attitudes and sensibilities. In an analysis of aggressive complaint behaviour, as well as of aggressive reactions to complaints, it transpired that many conflicts inherent in the interaction originated in different assessments of the situation, with the interactants defining their roles and goals differently.

This paper sets out to show, with the help of in-depth analyses of selected complaint interactions, how preconceived notions, as well as subconscious expressions of anger and aggression, influenced the interaction negatively and prevented a mutually satisfactory solution of the problem at hand. This line of research may help to clarify customer’s expectations and give insights into how to deal with complaints more effectively.