Incorporating human resource management initiatives into customer services: Empirical evidence from Chinese manufacturing firms

a r t i c l e i n f o The existing operations management literature has extensively investigated the associations between customer satisfaction and firm performance. However, how to improve customer satisfaction through employee empowerment, service reward, and service training has rarely been investigated. In this research, we tied human resource and service operations management to each other and examined the relationships among employee empowerment, service reward, service training, employee satisfaction, customer service and customer satisfaction based on empirical study of 214 Chinese manufacturing companies. Using structural equation modeling, we found that both employee empowerment and service training have significant impacts on employee satisfaction and customer service, while service reward only has significant impact on customer service. We also found that both employee satisfaction and customer service have significant impact on customer satisfaction. However, the impact of employee satisfaction on customer service is insignificant. The findings suggest that employee empowerment, service reward and service training are important considerations for operations managers to boost employee satisfaction and customer service, which in turn improve customer satisfaction. We provide empirical evidence that employee empowerment, service reward and service training play significant roles in increasing customer satisfaction in the context of manufacturing businesses. Due to the shrinking of product life cycles and increasing global competition , as well as volatile market dynamics, organizations have become more active in seeking ways of improving customer satisfaction to raise performance (Yee, Yeung, & Cheng, 2010). Service operations management (SOM) has emphasized providing excellent customer service as a means to improve customer satisfaction. In recent years, many manufacturing companies have made service transition a priority to maintain a long-term competitive advantage (Gebauer, Gustafsson, & Witell, 2011; Jacob & Ulaga, 2008). Substantial research has also been devoted to such topics as innovating, managing and optimizing service systems, in order to enhance customer service and operational performance (e.g., Kumar & Telang, 2011). However, many firms have enthusiastically applied the operation-centric approach which focuses on the manufacturing process of optimization, sequencing and timing as an effective means for improving organizational performance, while the impact of human resource management (HRM) practices on operational systems has often been overlooked (Boudreau, Hopp, McClain, & Thomas, 2003). The importance of HRM practices such as employee empowerment, service reward and service training and their impacts on employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction have largely been neglected in the existing SOM literature (Boudreau, 2004). On the other …