Managing customers as human resources in service organizations

On-site service encounters blur the organizational boundary between employees and customers. The strategic trade-offs involved in having customers on-site, and the HRM practices that can influence the satisfaction and performance of customers within the organization, are described. Central points include the HRM practices that foster a climate for service and that provide customers the role clarity, ability, and motivation they require to contribute to service production and delivery.     

顾客需求与组织制度的碰撞:亲顾客偏离行为的形成与影响

亲顾客偏离行为是指一线员工以帮助顾客、维护顾客利益、满足顾客个性化需求为首要动机,在服务交付过程中有意识偏离组织正式规章制度、服务规程或政策禁令的一种角色外行为。本文立足于亲顾客偏离行为"亲顾客"与"偏离组织规则"这两个特征,系统性揭示员工亲顾客偏离行为的形成机制与影响后果。在形成机制方面,揭示了服务型领导通过激发员工的心理安全感与工作自主性,来增强员工的自我效能感,最终促进员工的亲顾客偏离行为,组织创新氛围与员工冒险倾向在上述过程中起到正向调节作用。在影响后果方面,揭示了亲顾客偏离行为的双刃剑效应,既能引发涉事顾客的感知优待与赞许他人的道德情绪,促使其做出积极的服务评价;又会引发同属顾客的不公平感知与谴责他人的道德情绪,致使其做出消极的服务评价,涉事顾客的涉入度在上述过程中起到负向调节作用。本文有助于科学地认识、评估并有效引导员工的亲顾客偏离行为。     

Exploring a possible route through which training affects organizational performance: the case of a Greek bank

Despite the dithyramb on training found throughout the literature, its impact on organizational performance still remains a ‘black box’ yet to be unlocked. Indeed, neither the intervening process nor the factors that mediate training effectiveness have been substantively explored or linked together in a framework. In this paper, gaining insights from the concept of the balanced scorecard and using the service profit chain as a strategy map, an attempt is made to formulate a casual linkage value chain that highlights one possible route through which training can impact organizational performance. Using a predictive design, data were collected from multiple sources (employees, customers, and the bank's financial records) and raters from a sample of 30 branches of a Greek bank. The findings confirmed a framework illuminating a value exchange process ignited by training. More precisely, the results suggested that a formal, structured, and long-term approach to training, as well as certain pre- and post-training conditions and activities, improve training effectiveness by creating positive perceptions about the training's value. The generated for employees value results to higher levels of job satisfaction which boosts employee loyalty, creating in this sense value for the organization. This value is reflected to customers, in terms of better service quality, and reciprocated to the organization through higher customer satisfaction and branch loyalty leading to improved profitability at the branch level.     

Performing catharsis: The use of online discussion forums in organizational change

Online discussion forums have been used to both support and resist organizational change. Our empirical study examined how employees in one organization used an online forum to help them deal discursively with changes that they perceived as threatening to their identity. In particular, we found that the postings of one key individual were central in framing the organizational changes in a way that had powerful cathartic consequences for employees’ feelings of anger and loss of face. Paradoxically, however, we also found that such use of the online forum had the contradictory consequence of helping to facilitate the very changes that employees perceived to be problematic.     

Learning by customers as co-producers in financial services: An empirical study of the effects of learning channels and customer characteristics

As customers become more involved in executing service tasks, service performance is increasingly reliant on the efficiency and effectiveness of this customer co-production. While organizational and employee learning have been extensively studied, learning by customers in their role as co-producers is largely unexplored. To explore how customers learn to be better co-producers, we examine whether learning channels and customer characteristics impact the customer learning rate. Using longitudinal panel data consisting of 954 customers who adopted and used a bank??s online banking product over a 12-month period, we find that service delivery channels can have dual effects on customer learning, acting as learning channels to accelerate customer learning and/or impeding learning through channel substitution. In addition, customers?? experiences working on related technology-mediated tasks and absorptive capacity increase their learning rate. Overall, our results suggest that customer learning can be designed into the service delivery system by encouraging the use of channels with complementary learning effects and discouraging channel substitution.     

Improving Customer Service In Public Sector Organizations

The purpose of this paper is to formulate a customer orientation framework, which may assist in providing service organizations with strategies for a competitive advantage. The proposed markét-led approach towards excellent service for Shanghai Telecom customers includes upgrading staff awareness of external competition, changing culture, leadership, information channels, and staff training. It involves customers and employees in the design of service strategies. It is suggested that the remuneration should be linked to customer satisfaction. A new marketing division would consider competitive advantage issues. The findings and recommendations on the bridging gaps between customer expectations and the provision of service are of interest in over eighty countries that are currently restructuring their state-owned enterprises.     

The importance of an internal marketing orientation in social services

• The current research takes an interdisciplinary approach to examine the role of emotions in the successful delivery of social services. Survey data collected from 533 frontline social service providers were subjected to regression analyses. Findings reveal that emotional intelligence mediates the relationship between emotional labor and job stress, which in‐turn impacts job performance. The findings suggest that an internal marketing orientation is needed to better match the organization's products (i.e., jobs) with its internal customers (employees), and in‐turn improve the quality (job performance) of its offerings to its external customers.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

内部服务质量理论及其对服务性企业管理实践的启示

根据服务利润链理论,内部服务质量决定了员工的满意感,满意的员工能够为顾客提供高价值的服务,从而使顾客形成满意感和忠诚感,为企业赢得利润和发展。要激励全体员工做好服务工作,自觉地为顾客提供优质服务,服务性企业必须将广大员工当做内部顾客,尽力满足员工的需要和愿望,为员工提供优质的内部服务。     

主客互动视角下的新时期酒店一线员工管理研究

服务组织、一线员工以及顾客形成的互动系统,是实施成功的服务过程生产率和质量管理与控制的关键。新时期中,酒店的顾客结构及层次发生变化,主客互动视角下,酒店应结合一线员工需求心理变化,从效率、业绩、情感、文化出发,通过提供优良的环境、有效的培训、顾客管理、构建学习型组织,以保证管理策略的有效。     

Customer‐oriented employees: Blessing or curse for firms?

I investigate whether the presence of customer‐oriented employees benefits firms in a competitive environment. Employees are defined as customer‐oriented if they are interested not only in their wage but also in the well‐being of their customers. I find that firms may obtain higher profits by hiring self‐interested rather than customer‐oriented employees. This is because the employees' customer orientation has opposing effects on the profits obtained by the firms. On the one hand, customer‐oriented employees provide a given level of quality for a lower wage. On the other hand, the employees' customer orientation increases competition reducing prices. If the second effect dominates, firms find themselves trapped in a prisoners' dilemma as the strategy of hiring self‐interested employees is strictly dominated by that of hiring customer‐oriented employees. Hence, the very presence of customer‐oriented employees may hurt firms. If motivated employees are merely interested in the quality of the good provided, the effect on the price outlined before disappears.     

The effects of IT-enabled supply chain process change on job and process outcomes: A longitudinal investigation

Prior research on information technology (IT)-enabled supply chain management (SCM) has primarily focused on macro-level issues (e.g., IT capabilities related to SCM, and SCM design and optimization) and outcomes (e.g., firm performance). There has been limited research that focuses on micro-level outcomes related to employees who actually execute SCM processes in organizations. These employee-level outcomes are important because successful implementation of SCM systems and processes hinges on SCM employees’ support and commitment. I develop and test a model positing that SCM employees’ perceptions of changes in their work process characteristics, i.e., process complexity and process rigidity, following a new SCM system implementation will influence their job outcomes, i.e., job performance, job satisfaction, job anxiety, and job security, and their perceptions of process outcomes, i.e., process performance and relationship quality. The model incorporates a holistic appraisal of the extent of change—change radicalness—as a mechanism between work process characteristics and outcomes. The model is supported in three studies conducted in the context of three different SCM system implementations (N = 278, 282, and 304, respectively). In particular, I found that individuals perceived a significant change in their work process characteristics following an SCM system implementation, and changes in work process characteristics had a significant impact on job and process outcomes. These findings contribute to the information systems and operations management literatures and their intersections by offering insights on challenges related to IT-enabled SCM innovation implementation in organizations.     

一线员工对客服务中的移情心理研究

对于任何一个企业,特别是服务性企业来说,顾客的高满意度是企业获取竞争优势的关键因素,而一线员工在对客服务中的移情心理又为获取顾客高满意度起到了关键作用。虽然大部分企业已经向顾客标榜"我们关心您"的口号,但仍旧有不少企业行动上却只关心如何从消费者手中获取更多的利益。事实上,企业要想真正赢得顾客的忠诚,则必须在服务过程中学会如何有效地倾听顾客,做到真正从顾客的利益出发。     

Operations change interactions in a service environment: Attitudes,behaviors, and profitability

An attitudinal and behavioral change program was developed and implemented in a service operations function. Changes were (1) stabilizing operations management (reducing turnover) and (2) improving attitudes and behaviors of employees with strong union affiliations in a common carrier trucking terminal when compared to similar employees in a control terminal undergoing no planned change. Management turnover was reduced. Other results from the eighteen-month longitudinal study indicated that employee attitudes in both groups remained negative toward work, management, and the company throughout the study period. Behaviors relating to attitudes — particularly turnover, absenteeism, and accident rates—improved at the experimental terminal, even though expressed attitudes remained negative. Operating efficiencies and profitability improved at the experimental terminal. It was found that these employees, pick-up and delivery drivers, retain positive attitudes toward customers and customers the same toward them, in spite of the drivers' negative attitudes toward the company. The operative service employee appeared to discriminate between attitudes toward the company and the customer; the drivers' negative attiudes toward most everything (except the customer) not affecting the customer's perceptions of the driver or the company.     

Task Conflict and Employee Creativity: The Critical Roles of Learning Orientation and Goal Congruence

We add to human resource literature by investigating how the contribution of task conflict to employee creativity depends on employees’ learning orientation and their goal congruence with organizational peers. We postulate a positive relationship between task conflict and employee creativity and predict that this relationship is augmented by learning orientation but attenuated by goal congruence. We also argue that the mitigating effect of goal congruence is more salient among employees who exhibit a low learning orientation. Our results, captured from employees and their supervisors in a large, Mexican‐based organization, confirm these hypotheses. The findings have important implications for human resource managers who seek to foster creativity among employees. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

员工满意度、服务质量和顾客满意度之间的关系综述

在商品日益趋近同质化的今天,企业通过产品质量和技术优势等来赢得竞争已变得越来越困难,因此从顾客方面来入手越来越受到企业的重视。从顾客方面入手,即是让顾客满意,顾客满意主要是通过顾客感知的服务质量来衡量的。而服务的提供者是企业的员工,从而企业要使员工满意。     

HR as a strategic partner: Culture change as an American Express case study

A corporate culture is the combination of the values and characteristics that define an organization. It influences the way employees relate to each other, to customers, to shareholders, and to business partners. It drives behaviors and unites employees around a shared set of values. Companies with strong, formally articulated values that are focused on the needs of their constituencies have an important advantage over those without such values. American Express recently worked to strengthen its culture and renew its corporate values. I will focus on why this initiative was important, how we reviewed company culture and implemented culture change strategy, and what early results showed. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The consequences and limits of empowerment in financial services

Empowerment may be one of the answers to the growing competition and increasingly demanding customers in the financial retail sector, but the relation between empowerment and profit-oriented behaviour at the service encounter has been only sparsely documented. This article offers a comparative empirical analysis of the conditions and impact of empowerment and related activities in Danish financial institutions, with a focus on semi-standardised front-line jobs. The results indicate that granting decision-making authority and autonomy to the individual front-line employees has often been a powerful step in the efforts of the financial service companies to increase their competitiveness. In the change process, formal participation has only a moderate supportive impact on performance while changes initiated at the branch offices and the linking of rewards with performance, both have a notably positive impact on the competitiveness and profit-oriented behaviour of front-line employees.     

‘My People’: the potential of LGBT employee networks in reducing stigmatization and providing voice

Abstract

This paper explores the separation and isolation from the mainstream workforce that lesbian, gay, and bisexual employees can experience due to their sexual orientation, and how this can affect their voice and silence in the workplace. In response to perceived threats and actual experience of stigma in the workplace, we highlight the need for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) voice in organizations, while unpacking the complexities and concerns for LGBT employees in publicly voicing their sexual orientation at work. We explore how LGBT employee networks help mitigate LGBT isolation at work, and can directly and indirectly provide them with voice in the organization. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with LGBT employees across organizations in Ireland. The findings confirm that LGBT employees can experience isolation at work, affecting their voice, and that workplace networks may moderate this loneliness and stigma. However, the findings question the value of LGBT employee networks in providing voice for all sexual minority employees. Our research considers the individual-level responses of LGBT employees to participation in, and the value of, employee networks, and the perceived role of these networks in giving them visibility and voice.     

服务导向与组织内外部营销表现关系之研究

在服务营销管理的领域中，内部营销及外部营销均为影响组织绩效的关键因素，本研究以餐饮业的服务员工及顾客为实证研究的对象，将服务导向作为主要变量，从员工及顾客的角度，发展一个整合服务导向及组织内、外部营销表现的模型，并以LISREL分析验证本研究所提出的假设。     

You care about me,but can I count on you? Applying a psychological contract perspective to investigate what makes employees willing to be internally employable

Abstract

For this study, we adopted a psychological contract-based perspective to investigate whether the fulfillment of perceived developmental promises made to employees is positively related to their willingness to accept internal job-related changes when needed by the organization, a construct we refer to as the willingness to be internally employable. We also examined the role played by line managers in facilitating employees’ willingness to be internally employable by fulfilling perceived developmental promises. We tested our conceptual model with data collected from ninety-eight recently hired employees in a Norwegian organization under an initiative emphasizing employee development. We found that developmental promise fulfillment is more important for employees’ willingness to be internally employable in this context than any perceived provision of developmental inducements in isolation. Further, we found that employee perceptions of the developmental support provided by their line manager related positively to their willingness to be internally employable by way of developmental promise fulfillment; however, this was not the case with perceived developmental inducements. Our findings support the importance of developmental promise fulfillment in fostering employee willingness to be internally employable and the critical role played by line managers in fulfilling developmental promises that employees believe have been made by their organization.