Arbeits- und Organisationspsychologie

When service fails, conflicts between customers and front-line staff frequently ensue. These conflicts are costly to the individuals involved and to the firms that depend upon them. The multi-staged research described in this paper aims to identify ways to avoid, minimize and/or resolve conflicts between customers and front-line service industry employees. Improved service delivery, more loyal customers, and reduced staff burnout and turnover are possible long-term benefits. Our research draws on and attempts to integrate the large but separate literatures on customer service and satisfaction, on the one hand, and employee stress and burnout, on the other. A psychosocial needs perspective provides the major theoretical foundation for the research. Using an inter-disciplinary, multi-method approach, we focus on several kinds of service encounter behaviours: (a) customer articulation of, and response to, service failures, (b) employee actions aimed at service recovery, (c) customer responses to the recovery attempt, and (d) actions aimed at managing responses to service encounter-related stressors. A dyadic approach is adopted: the aim is to identify acts that meet needs and enhance outcomes for customers and service staff alike. This paper gives details of the first phase of our research. In this phase, we conducted two qualitative studies that describe and classify service encounter behaviours that affect participant psychosocial need fulfilment, and, in turn, influence key outcomes such as participant satisfaction and loyalty. Using a grounded theory approach, we develop a model of these service encounter processes. Study 1 entails analyses of 94 audio-recordings of real-life service encounters taken from a utility company, a local government office, and an accommodation and tourism firm. All encounters involve disagreement or conflict between customer and service provider. Verbal and non-verbal content were analysed to identify (a) types of service encounter behaviours, (b) the character (e.g., the antecedents and frequency) of these behaviours, and (c) evidence suggesting these behaviours affect participants? psychosocial need fulfilment, and participant satisfaction, strain and other outcomes. Study 2 involved in-depth interviews with 57 people representing multiple perspectives on the issue ? customers (n = 14), front line staff (n = 29), team leaders, managers, and consultants (n = 14). Questions probed interviewees? perceptions of the antecedents and corollaries of service encounter conflict resolution and escalation. Service encounter content (Study 1) and interview content (Study 2) were analysed using the software package, NVivo 8. Analyses revealed the existence and likely influence of several psychosocial needs, including the needs for control, competence, respect, and pleasing relations. Service encounter satisfaction is shown to depend on the joint effects of participant expressive and listening skills, as mediated by these needs. Service provider behaviours commonly associated with customer frustration include interruptions during customer articulation of service problems, rigid adherence to scripts, and hollow displays of empathy and remorse. Major sources of employee stress include customer indecisiveness and demandingness, and increases in work load resulting from service failures. Together these behaviours and demands exacerbate interpersonal conflict, whilst other events such as apology-acceptance exchanges ameliorate conflict. Contextual factors such as inflexible policies and availability of social support moderate these relations. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Paper presented at the Eighteenth Annual Frontiers in Service conference, Hawaii, October- November, 2009.