Archives
Service Sells
Exploring connections between customer service strategy and the psychological contract
Leanne Cutcher
Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies, University of Sydney, Sydney NSW
Abstract
Drawing on detailed qualitative case study evidence from four retail banking organisations, this article highlights the connections between customer relations strategy, the psychological contract and employee behaviour.
The purpose of the research is to extend our understanding of the links between employees and customers by showing how this relationship evolves over time and by highlighting that a front-line employee’s service orientation needs to be understood within the broader context of the employee’s service experience.
It is suggested that a better understanding of these connections could facilitate improved customer service standards and enhance the experiences of those working in service industries.
Keywords
Customer, service climate, sales, psychological contract, strategy
Article Text
Increasingly, customer service staff are required to add a sales function to their core service role. Hairdressers, for example, no longer just style our hair and listen to our stories; they are required to sell us hair products. At the point where our hairdresser tells us we must buy this latest product to get the ‘right look’ the dynamic of the relationship shifts. This is because such active stimulation of demand highlights the previously hidden instrumental nature of the relationship and reminds both the customer and the hairdresser that the main aim of the game is for the firm to make money (Korczynski 2002). The requirement for employees to actively stimulate demand and encourage customers to make a purchase is likely to require a significant mind-shift for employees who have been recruited and trained to satisfy customer requirements and perform transactions without the immediate aim of making a sale. This article presents findings from in-depth case study research that explores how such shifts in customer relations strategy can impact on front-line service employees’ attitudes and behaviours.
The purpose of this article is to highlight the importance of understanding employee behaviour in customer service settings not simply as one-off exchanges, but within the broader context of the employee’s long-term customer service experience. This is done by contrasting the experiences of employees in four service organisations, two that changed from a service to a sales-focused strategy, and two that maintained a strategy focused on providing high levels of service with selling as an off-shoot of that strategy. In exploring the implications of these changes for employees the paper reviews the critical literature on key trends in customer service and discusses the impact that changes in the service climate of an organisation may have on an employee’s psychological contract.
The article begins with an overview of the literature that highlights the link between customer relations strategy and employee behaviour. The case study industry and research sites are then introduced. The next section of the paper sets out the methodology employed in the research and then the findings from the four case study organisations are presented. The discussion section highlights the implications of these findings for customer service organisations and the conclusion points to the need for future research that takes a longer term view of employee responses to change.
.... continues ....
Acknowledgement
The author would like to thank Professor Charles Areni for comments on an earlier draft, as well as the two anonymous referees for their very helpful feedback on the paper.
References
Bettencourt LA and Brown SW (1997) Contact employees: Relationships among workplace fairness, job satisfaction and prosocial service behaviours, Journal of Retailing 73: 39–61.
Bowen J and Ford R (2002) Managing service organisations: Does having a ‘thing’ make a difference? Journal of Management 28: 447–469.
Buono AF, Bodwitch JL and Lewis JW (1985) When cultures collide: The anatomy of a merger, Human Relations 38: 477–500.
Coyle-Shapiro J and Kessler L (2000) Consequences of the psychological contract for the employment relationship: A large scale survey, Journal of Management Studies 37: 903–930.
Deery S, Iverson RD and Walsh JT (2006) Toward a better understanding of psychological contract breach: A study of customer service employees, Journal of Applied Psychology 91: 166–175.
Dunford R and Palmer I (1996) Conflicting uses of metaphors: Reconceptualising their use in the field of organisational change, The Academy of Management Review 21: 671–718.
du Gay P (1996) Consumption and Identity at Work, Sage Publications, London.
Eisenhardt KM (1989) Building theories from case study research, Academy of Management Review 14: 532–550.
Frenkel SJ, Korczynski M, Shire K and Tam M (1999) On the Front Line – Organisations of work in the information economy, ILR Press, Cornell University Press.
Glaser B and Strauss A (1967) The Discovery of Grounded Theory, Aldine Publishing Company, New York.
Korczynski M (2002) Human Resource Management in Service Work, Palgrave, Basingstoke.
Korczynski M, Shire K, Frenkel S and Tam M (2000) Service work in consumer capitalism: Customers, control and contradictions, Work, Employment and Society 14: 669–687.
Lengnick-Hall C (1996) Customer contributions to quality: A different view of the customer-oriented firm, Academy of Management Review 21: 791–824.
McCammon HJ and Griffin LJ (2000) Workers and their customers and clients: An editorial introduction, Work and Occupations 27: 278–295.
Maquire H (2002) Psychological contracts: are they still relevant? Career Development International 7: 167–180.
O’Donnell M and Shields J (2002) Performance management and the psychological contract in the Australian federal public service, The Journal of Industrial Relations 44: 435–455.
Ogbonna E and Wilkinson B (2003) The false promise of organisational culture change: A case study of middle managers in grocery retailing, Journal of Management Studies 40: 1151–1178.
Rousseau DM (1998) The ‘problem’ of the psychological contract considered, Journal of Organisational Behaviour 19: 665–671.
Rousseau DM (1995) Psychological Contracts in Organisations, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Schneider B, Ehrhart M G, Mayer DM, Saltz J and Niles-Jolly K (2005) Understanding organisation-customer links in service settings, Academy of Management Journal 48: 1017–1032.
Schwartz H and Davis SM (1981) Matching corporate culture and business strategy, Organisational Dynamics Summer: 30–48.
Stoecker R (1991) Evaluating and rethinking the case study, The Sociological Review 39: 88–112.
Sturges J, Conway N, Guest D and Liefooghe A (2005) Managing the career deal: The psychological contract as a framework for understanding career management, organisational commitment and work behavior, Journal of Organisational Behavior 26: 821–838.
Tyler M and Taylor S (2001) Juggling justice and care: Gendered customer service in the contemporary airline industry, in Sturdy A, Grugulis I and Willmott H (eds) Customer Service: Empowerment or entrapment, Palgrave, Basingstoke.
Wray-Bliss E (2001) Representing customer service: Telephones and texts, in Sturdy A, Grugulis I and Willmott H (eds) Customer Service: Empowerment or entrapment, Palgrave, Basingstoke.
Wray-Bliss E and Willmott H (1999) Battling with the gods: Employees, management and the deities of post industrial management culture, Goodman RA (ed) Modern Organisations and Emerging Conundrums, Lexington Books, Lanham.
Yin RK (2003) Case Study Research: Design and methods 3rd edn, Sage Publications: Thousand Oaks.
eContent Home
