Work situation factors as enablers and disablers of frontline service employees’ customer orientation: an employee perspective
Loading...
URL
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
School of Business |
Master's thesis
Ask about the availability of the thesis by sending email to the Aalto University Learning Centre oppimiskeskus@aalto.fi
Authors
Date
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Language
en
Pages
96
Series
Abstract
Objectives The growing importance of service sectors in the national economy and the ever-increasing competition have given enormous rise in the research interest about the topic of customer orientation, its different practices and underlying causalities. For a successful implementation of customer orientation, service organization needs to take into consideration influential factors affecting one’s behavior. While there has been a great research effort put on evaluating the outcomes generated from customer-oriented behavior, the academic attention to explore the motivation and possible influencers is still scarce. Moreover, studies in the field of customer orientation traditionally focus either on work situation factors or personal attributes. This study carries the main objective of uncovering what work situation drivers support or hinder the development of frontline service employees’ customer-oriented behaviors, making important contributions to illuminate the complex construct of customer orientation practice at employee level. Methodology Qualitative single case study approach was selected as the research method. In the empirical study, eight individuals from four different café outlets of Fazer Cafe were interviewed. The interviews were semi-structured following the themes of the framework that was constructed for this study. Deductive content analysis method was used to analyze the empirical data. Findings This study explores work situation factors (including organizational factors and work attitude attributes) that enable and impede the development of frontline service employees’ customer-oriented behaviors. These behaviors can be motivated by: (1) proper establishment, dissemination and control of organizational standards for service delivery (2) sufficient supervisor and co-worker support (3) behavioral learning from co-workers as expert peers (4) high level of job satisfaction (5) high level of job involvement. The factors that would prevent employees from successful interactions with customers includes: (1) unsuccessful creation and articulation, loose control and lack of tracking and measuring system of organizational standards for service delivery (2) insufficient supervisor support (3) absence of reward and recognition system (4) job stress (5) low level of job satisfaction. The study’s findings also demonstrate that the organizational tactics and work attitude elements do not work separately; in fact, the latter was found to be the direct result of the former. This proven interrelation calls for service organizations’ attention in exploiting appropriate organizational tactics to cultivate desirable employees’ work attitudes which ultimately encourage them to exert their best efforts in creating superior customer service.Description
Thesis advisor
Rusanen, OlliMitronen, Lasse