Customer orientation of service employees Its impact on customer satisfaction, commitment, and retention

With the performance of service personnel often constituting a major element of a service per se, the customer orientation of service personnel is often regarded as a main determinant of service firms’ success. Drawing on a deductively derived four-dimensional conceptualization of the customer orientation of service personnel, consisting of employees’ technical skills, social skills, motivation, and decision-making power, a model of the impact employees’ customer orientation has on key service marketing constructs is theoretically developed. The model is then empirically tested against a sample of 989 consumers for two service contexts (i.e. book/CD/DVD retailers and travel agencies), with the results providing support for most hypotheses. Implications of the findings for services and retail management are discussed. Service success through customer-oriented employees? As a result of the intangible and interactive nature of services, customers often rely on the behavior of service employees when judging the quality of a service. Consequently, the employees’ level of customer orientation is considered an important leverage for service firms’ economic success (Bitner et al., 1990; Bove and Johnson, 2000; Bowen and Schneider, 1985; Sergeant and Frenkel, 2000). Despite its important position in the value chain, only few studies have addressed the construct of customer orientation of service employees (COSE) and its impact on service firms’ success (Brown et al., 2002). Noteworthy exceptions are the studies by Kelley (1992), Brown et al. (2002), Donavan et al. (2004), and Hennig-Thurau and Thurau (2003). While the first two studies focus on the relationship between COSE and employee characteristics such as personality traits, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment, the latter authors have suggested, but not empirically tested, a three-dimensional conceptualization of customer orientation of service employees, distinguishing between the employee’s motivation to serve customers, his or her customer-oriented skills, and his or her self-perceived decision-making authority. To the best of our knowledge, no study has yet tested the impact of COSE on the way customers assess transactions with service employees or their relationship with the service provider as a whole. This paper draws on the conceptualization suggested by Hennig-Thurau and Thurau (2003) and tests a model of COSE dimensions and customer-sided The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister www.emeraldinsight.com/0956-4233.htm The author is grateful to Daniel Bornemann at the University of Hannover for his support during the data collection part of this project. The author also thanks 100 students at the University of Muenster and the University of Hannover for their collaboration and Paul Marx for programming the survey. IJSIM 15,5