自從Peters and Waterman在「追求卓越」一書中指出，一個成功的組織必須傾聽顧客的聲音之後，「以客為尊」成為企業成功的典範，「顧客永遠是對的！」成為員工唯一的法則。但是，顧客永遠是對的嗎？即使顧客有錯！本研究由第一線服務人員的角度來探討難纏顧客的議題，由實證研究中發現在臺灣地區國際觀光旅館餐廳中，偶而會出現少數類型的難纏顧客行為，但是對服務人員的影響效果並不是很大，這些難纏顧客可以歸納為「永不滿足」、「傲慢自大」、「父母縱容」、「言行粗暴」、「違反規定」、「自以為是」、「拖延時間」等七種主要的行為類型，不同類型的難纏顧客行為對服務人員會有不同的影響效果，而且除了「性別」之外，不同背景特質的服務人員在面對難纏顧客時並無顯著差異。

Since the Peter and Waterman’s book, In Search of Excellence, points out that a successful organization has to listen customers’ voice. Thus, “customer is first” becomes a paradigm that make business success, “customer is always right” becomes a rule that employee has to remember. However, is customer always right? This study explored the subject of “customer from hell” by the point of front-line employees’ view. Sometimes a few types of customers from hell behavior appeared in the restaurants of international tourism hotels in Taiwan through the finding of experimental research. Nevertheless, they did not make quite influence effect on the employees. The types of customers from hell could be generalized to “never satisfaction”, “arrogance”, “permissive parent”, “rude behavior”, “rule violation”, “self-righteous” and “time vampire”, 7 main behavior types. Different kinds of customers from hell behavior had different influential effect. Furthermore, there were not significantly different on the characteristic of employees except “gender” when they dealt with customers from hell.