Leveraging employee emotional intelligence in casino profitability

Drawing on the link between service quality and casino profitability, this paper describes the roles of frontline employees in delivering casino service quality and analyses how management can nurture employee emotional intelligence's (EEI) contribution to casino revenue growth. This study is conceptual in nature. The analysis builds from identifying the emotional contents embracing service encounter involving casino frontline employees and customers. The identification area approaches from emotional work performed by employees, referred to as emotional labor, the emotional service delivered by casinos, customer attributed emotions and emotional contagion. The study comprehensively analyses how EEI can manage and regulate emotionally charged service encounters which subsequently affect customers’ perception of employee behaviours and service performance over service encounters. These encounter performance forms customers’ perception of casino service quality which leads to customer loyalty and ultimately casino profitability. This theory-focused study presents an additional venue with great potential for casinos to enhance business performance and financial growth, as well as providing new insights into the role of EEI in organizations for researchers in the relevant field.     

How transformational leadership fuels employees’ service innovation behavior

Although there is a consensus that transformational leadership (TFL) is critical to successful service innovation behavior, the relationship between the two remains inconclusive. This study adopts a dual perspective approach that considers both motivational and social-political perspectives to further elicit the influence of TFL on the service innovation behavior of frontline employees. Using multiphase and multisource data from 269 employees and 1396 customers of hair salons, the results show that the perceived organizational climate for innovation, creative self-efficacy, and expected image gains fully mediate the relationship between TFL and employees’ service innovation behavior. TFL positively influences employees’ perceived organizational climate for innovation, which in turn enhances the service innovation behavior of employees through both motivational (i.e. creative self-efficacy) and social-political (i.e. expected image gains) mediating mechanisms. Surprisingly, expected image risks are found to have a non-significant relationship with service innovation behavior. We discuss implications of these findings with respect to innovation literature and management practice, as well as offer suggestions for further research.     

The happy virtual agent and its impact on the human customer in the service encounter

Few existing virtual agents (VAs) that customers interact with in service encounters can experience emotions, but they can be (and often are) designed so that they appear to have this capability. The purpose of this study was to assess VAs' display of happiness in service encounters when the only means they have to express themselves is the text that they transmit. Linguistic elements that influence the perceived happiness of a (human) sender of text messages were identified in a pilot study, and they were used to manipulate VA display of happiness in two experiments. In addition, a field study was carried out to capitalize on customers’ existing experience of service encounters with VAs in bona fide commercial settings. The experiments showed that VA text manipulated to signal VA happiness boosts overall VA evaluations, and the field study showed that perceived VA happiness is positively associated with overall VA evaluations. Taken together, the findings indicate that we humans are so hardwired for interactions with other humans that we react to VA display of happiness in ways that resemble our reactions when we are exposed to happy humans. The findings also provide designers of VAs and service marketers with a set of easily implemented linguistic elements that can be employed to make VAs appear happy in service encounters.     

Effects of face masks and photo tags on nonverbal communication in service encounters

Facial expressions convey critical information for customers to evaluate a service encounter. Widespread mask-wearing since the pandemic began has brought challenges in decoding individuals' facial expressions. This study investigates the effects of face masks on customers' interpretations of frontline employees’ facial expressions across retailing and healthcare service contexts. The findings show that mask-wearing improves customer perception of service employees and behavioral intention when the employees display neutral or negative emotions. Photo tags, as an additional nonverbal signal, can enhance the positive perceptions of masked employees. This research suggests that service companies could incorporate face masks and photo tags as a cost-effective practice to improve service encounters beyond the current pandemic.     

Enhancing Dyadic Performance Through Boundary Spanners and Innovation: An Assessment of Service Provider–Customer Relationships

Firms recognize that working together through collaborative relationships offers potential benefits such as improving cooperation, information sharing, and overall performance. An additional and extremely valuable benefit of working together is the potential for creating innovative business approaches and solutions. Thus, developing external linkages has become a higher priority within many organizations. Boundary spanning employees offer one means of achieving closer cross‐firm relationships. We investigate the roles of boundary spanners by examining service providers and their relationships with customers. More specifically, we examine boundary spanning employees that are physically on‐site at customer facilities. Results provide strong support that boundary spanners perceiving higher levels of external organizational support from a client subsequently develop affective commitment to the customer. This, in turn, drives knowledge exchange and logistics innovation. A relationship between logistics innovation and performance (of service providers and of customers) was also found. Managerial implications of the research findings are discussed and suggestions presented covering future research.     

Labor scheduling,part 1: forecasting demand

This paper focuses on forecasting demand for services, the first of a four-part series on developing effective workforce schedules. Serving customers well, at a reasonable cost, requires the proper number and mix of employees. Scheduling too many employees means high labor costs, while scheduling too few workers can mean poor service that drives away business. Forecasting customer demand involves eight steps: determine the nature of the work, identify those factors that generate the work (i.e., the labor drivers), determine whether the labor drivers are time variant or time invariant, determine the time interval for tracking the time-variant labor drivers, forecast the time-variant labor drivers, smooth those forecasts, track the error in those forecasts, and define the allowable window for controllable work. Balancing employees' skills and availability, plus governmental regulations, company policies, and contractual obligations regarding work schedules, can be a manager's nightmare.     

Managing a Global Retail Brand in Different Markets: Meta-Analyses of Customer Responses to Service Encounters

This study investigates how retailers can leverage their brand to shape customers’ satisfaction with service encounters. It develops and tests hypotheses about how brand, store, and consumer factors moderate customer responses to experience clues during retail service encounters. Six meta-regression analyses synthesize and compare results from 842 satisfaction equations describing customers’ encounters with a global retailer operating 400 stores in 32 countries. The results show how customers weigh their perceptions of service encounters differently depending on brand, store, and consumer factors. In markets where customers believe the retailer has high holistic brand quality, they place less weight on experience clues within the store. In markets where customers believe the retailer’s service brand promise, they place more weight on in-store experience clues. In markets where the retailer promises utilitarian value, customers weigh functional experience clues more heavily. In markets with an online purchasing channel, the effect of experience clues common to offline and online store environments is magnified, and unique clues are diminished. In addition, customers heavily weigh experience clues that fit their goals. In general, retail success factors include high brand quality (which makes customers more forgiving), a service brand promise that is mirrored in the store image (which makes customers attend to the experience clues aligned with them), and the careful monitoring and managing of retail touchpoints (to customize experience clues to each market). In this way, retailers can use customer-based strategies to effectively design and manage their global retail brand in different markets.     

Development of new technology-based services

In an environment where customers can hardly describe new technology-based services (TBSs) of the future and technological engineers are unlikely to understand how a new technology can work for new services, a guideline to generate ideas for TBS can be utilized to achieve successful service innovation. Thus, this paper aims to develop an ideation framework for TBS. Two methods – the technology tree and the function analysis systems technique – are employed to identify core utilities expected from a new technology. Then a new method, the service encounter value matrix, which is based on morphology analysis and is used for generating potential service ideas, is suggested. Finally, these ideas are evaluated, and only those that are of a high priority according to customers’ expectations of future society are selected. In this study, the framework is applied to telecommunication technology, which is timely and useful for designing future services.     

The Importance of Hotel Employee Service Attitude and the Satisfaction of International Tourists

Although there have been numerous studies dealing with service attitude and customer satisfaction, they have not specifically addressed international hotel customers. Moreover, most of them have discussed the subject from the viewpoint of the employee. This study takes a customer perception approach and emphasises critical factors (elements) of service attitude affecting the satisfaction of international tourists. It has been found that the importance of employee attitudes to service and the level of satisfaction with the service vary significantly among customers of different nationalities. For example, American travellers emphasise elements such as employees being able to solve their problems, and so are dissatisfied with the service when employees lack an adequate command of English. Taiwanese customers stress the importance of employees treating customers politely regardless of their attire. They feel that they are treated unfairly because of employee expectations of tips from well-dressed customers. These findings could furnish managers with useful information for planning marketing and personnel training.     

Ethical Customer Value Creation: Drivers and Barriers

There is a long-standing discussion on the positive interactions between enterprise value creation and business competitiveness. The corporate value can be seen as being created from three major sources within the cycle – from employees, from processes, and from customers or investors through reinvestment. To achieve competitive advantages, a firm must create more value than its competitors in the industry. Emphasizing that, firms should explore the positive drivers of customer value creation, allowing for a true value creation that will lead to increments in competitiveness. In reality, however, there are also barriers that hinder customer value creation. Targeting the above issues that have not yet been explored or analyzed, we have collected related literature at the first stage. Based on these presumable assumptions, this paper then conducts an empirical study by surveying and analyzing the relevance given by the investigated leading machinery measuring equipment firms in Taiwan, regarding the concerns as drivers and barriers in relation to customer value creation. This paper especially aims to answer several key questions: What drivers revolving around employees and processes can facilitate the organization to create more value for its customers? Conversely, what barriers block the organization from creating value for customers in examining the same dimensions? Does value creation direct an organization’s profitability and competitiveness? Our questionnaire survey results show that the most recognized and agreed drivers of customer value creation in consideration of employees are “distinctive skills”, “personal experience”, “learning and training”, and “team work”; and, in regard to the firm’s processes, the key drivers are “innovation and evolution”, “R&;D capability”, and “capability for differentiation”. Conversely, the most recognized and agreed barriers to customer value creation in relation to employees are a “distrustful environment” and “inadequate knowledge”; and, in terms of processes, they are “short of core technology”, “poor resource support”, and “bad services and attitudes”. Furthermore, our in-depth interview outcomes reveal that “capital sufficiency” and “mergers and acquisitions” are in practice considered to be other important customer value creation drivers; in contrast, “cultural and structural barriers” and “short of mechanisms to measure customer value creation effectively” are viewed as additional critical barriers to customer value creation.     

Digital innovation: An essence for Industry 4.0

The goal of this paper is to explain why digital innovation is so important in business organizations in order to survive in Industry 4.0. The study helps to understand the new era of Industry 4.0 and the importance of introducing digital innovation into organizations. A systematic review of the literature and studies on Industry 4.0 and digital innovation were synthesized to find answers to the research questions. To improve their manufacturing industry, organizations have implemented digital technologies such as augmented reality, robotic sensing, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, cyber physical systems, and remote sensing technologies. These technologies focused on automating logistics and supply chain systems, improving manufacturing system performance, and simplifying automated production systems. Because digital innovations save time and energy, employees can devote more time and energy to creative and innovative activities. Organizations should plan to implement digital technology in order to keep the environment healthy and sustainable while meeting the demands of customers, consumers, and the Industry 4.0 dimension.     

When customers want to become frontline employees: an exploratory study of decision factors and motivation types

Labor shortages have long been an issue in the service industry. One pool of potential dedicated and skilled employees that has remained untapped is customers. This study explores the customer to frontline employee (CtFE) phenomenon: customers becoming frontline employees after consumption experience. Through one-on-one, in-depth interviews, we identify factors related to job choice and service experience influencing customers’ CtFE decisions. We also develop propositions and a conceptual framework to describe CtFE choices. Finally, we categorize potential CtFEs as idealist, dream-catcher, approval-seeker, and pragmatist. Our findings suggest that CtFEs can be a critical labor source in the service sector.     

The Role of External Relationships for LSP Innovativeness: A Contingency Approach

Innovativeness is key to the success of logistics service providers (LSPs) and as LSPs often lack competencies for innovation internally, external relations as sources to acquire knowledge relevant for innovation are important. To the authors' knowledge, there is no research identifying the relevant knowledge sources for LSP innovativeness. Based on contingency theory, we develop a conceptual model on the relevance of different external relations in the context of the innovation focus of the LSP. Thus, we extend insights from previous studies that have only discussed the benefits of external knowledge acquisition in general and outline how to use existing business relations of an LSP to facilitate different types of innovation. The hypothesized model is tested based on survey data from 201 LSPs using structural equation modeling. The findings support the model and outline that better relationships with external service firms or other LSPs are not important for internal process improvements and innovations for existing customers, but very valuable for innovations targeting new customer business, while good relations to customers even show a slight tendency to hamper the development of innovations for new customer business. In addition, it is shown that innovativeness is a strong driver of LSP firm performance.     

Diversity of innovation patterns in services

Recently, literature on innovation in service activities has increased significantly. Much effort has been concentrated on understanding the importance of innovation for these activities, and on stressing innovative differences relative to the manufacturing innovation model. However, a deeper understanding is needed in three main areas: the degree of innovation heterogeneity among different service activities, the factors that explain this heterogeneity, and the primary drivers of the innovation process for each activity. Using results from the Third Community Innovation Survey, this paper aims to identify the extent to which there are similarities and differences in the main innovation attributes in four important service sub-sectors. After describing the characteristics of innovation and the behavior of variables in the sub-sectors, a typology of innovation patterns is identified.     

Rapport-Building Behaviors Used by Retail Employees

The rapport between employees and customers represents a particularly salient issue in retail businesses characterized by significant interpersonal interactions. Although rapport relates significantly to customer satisfaction, loyalty, and word-of-mouth communication, the behaviors employees use to develop rapport receive minimal attention in marketing and management literature. Using research on rapport-building behaviors identified in other literature as a basis for investigation, this study investigates the extent to which such behaviors are relevant in commercial settings. With the critical incident technique, the authors identify rapport-building behaviors commonly used by retail employees in 388 service encounters. Analysis of 824 rapport-building behaviors described in these encounters confirms three categories suggested by previous research - uncommonly attentive, common grounding, and courteous behavior - and identifies two additional categories that have not been linked to rapport in retail settings, namely, connecting and information sharing behavior. The authors conclude with a discussion of managerial and research implications.     

Barriers and enablers for innovation in the retail sector: Co-innovating with the customer. A case study in grocery retailing

This article aims to analyze innovation barriers and drivers in the retail sector and report on a successful product innovation case study of a leading grocery retailing firm in Spain. The firm, Mercadona, successfully launched an original co-innovation initiative with its customers consisting of bringing consumers to co-innovation labs set up by the company, having them analyze, in a home environment setting, how they use the firm's products and what suggestions they have for alternative methods, improvements, or completely new developments. The research findings were conclusive that a combination of customer focus culture, brand development, and cooperation with suppliers was crucial for the success of the project. Technology contributed as well as a supportive tool of the communication with consumers. The method followed a new and unique ethnographic approach.     

The authentic service employee: Service employees' language use for authentic service experiences

This study analyzes how service employees' language use influences the authenticity of a service. The extant service literature on language use remains exclusively focused on the customer's perceptions of first language use in direct communication. Shifting the focus to the service employee, this paper posits that language could exert a wider influence, contributing both to how customers perceive the authenticity of the service and the entire service experience. Analyzing language use in service encounters, the paper addresses this research gap in the literature from the perspective of the service employee. In many service settings, authenticity is an important part in customers' construal of their experience. The study analyzes how service employees in British pubs outside the UK may use English with local customers who frequent these pubs to get a taste of Britain and British culture, contributing to the service literature by introducing a typology to align the service employees' language use with authenticity to strengthen the customer experience. The paper further contributes to service theory by extending the understanding of service sabotage by showing how, why, and in which circumstances service employees may use a language switch to sabotage the customer experience. Finally, the study extends the extant human resources literature on the effects of allowing service employees to be themselves to show that this managerial practice not only benefits the service employees also results in a more authentic customer experience.     

Service with improper requests: How fellow customers interpret Employee's judgment call

In this paper, we examined the impact of different judgment calls by service personnel on service satisfaction, in response to inappropriate requests from customers. Based on the stereotype content model, we propose that employees servicing with these requests are often evaluated on two fundamental dimensions, warmth and competence, and the accessibility of one dimension over the other determines overall service satisfaction of fellow customers. Through three experiments, the current research shows that fellow customers perceive service employees who consent to an improper request as higher in warmth but lower in competence than those who reject the request. However, when the compliance has serious consequences for a fellow customer, this negatively affects the competence evaluation but not the warmth evaluation, which in turn reduce customer satisfaction. When the focal customer suffers from the serious consequences, this positively affect both competence and warmth perception, which in turn enhance fellow customer satisfaction. This research could be used to identify ways to handle improper requests made by customers.     

Innovation patterns and their effects on firm performance

This study aims to identify various innovation patterns and understand their effects on firm performance across business service sectors. By collecting empirical data from 198 Korean business services firms, we explore these firms’ major innovation patterns, conceptualized as combinations of different service innovation dimensions: service concept, service delivery, customer interaction, and technology. Then, in accordance with the innovation patterns they display, we group these firms into four clusters: ‘service delivery-based high-technology', ‘service delivery and customer interaction-integrated', ‘customer interaction-based high-technology', and ‘strongly balanced’ innovators. Last, we investigate whether these patterns influence firm performance. Our findings are three-fold: (1) the innovation patterns in business service firms result from the creation of new combinations of major service innovation dimensions, (2) four independent innovation patterns emerge in business service firms, and (3) these patterns lead to different levels of firm performance. Practically, our findings highlight the importance of highly qualified employees, customer interaction, and technology in improving financial performance.