Purpose: This paper investigates how the service physical context interplays with other customers’ presence and behavior to affect customer service experience. It further explores whether and how customers attribute the responsibility for their negative experience caused by customer-to-customer interactions (CCI) related to the physical environment to service organizations and examines how such attribution affects customers’ repatronage intentions and word-of-mouth behavior. Design/methodology/approach: This study adopts a mixed, qualitative–quantitative approach and draws on three sets of data from a sample of 231 customers collected with the critical incident technique across eight service industries. Content and interpretative analyses are used to explore the qualitative data; OLS and binomial logistic regression analyses are performed to analyze the quantitative data. Findings: Negative CCI related to the physical context affect customer experience through three mechanisms: (1) when other customers’ disturbing behavior is triggered by the physical servicescape; (2) when other customers’ behavior is incongruent with the behavioral norms set by the physical servicescape; (3) when the physical servicescape is altered by other customers’ behavior. Moreover, a majority of customers attribute the responsibility of their diminished experience to the service providers and suggest a range of preventing solutions, which can be implemented by the service organization. Finally, results show that attribution, satisfaction, and negative affect influence customers’ repatronage intentions. Customers’word-of-mouth behavior is only affected by negative affect. Originality: This study provides a comprehensive empirically grounded theoretical framework of the effect of negative CCI related to physical context on customer experience.