Factors that Influence Customer-Oriented Behavior of. Customer-Contact Employees

Transcription

1 Factors that Influence Customer-Oriented Behavior of Customer-Contact Employees 1 Wen-hai Chih 2 Ci-Rong Li 1 Professor, Department of Business Administration, National Dong-Hwa University 2 PhD student, Department of Business Administration, National Dong-Hwa University whchih@mail.ndhu.edu.tw Abstract Customer-oriented behavior of customer-contact employees is important during customer decision making process in service industry. In light of research void, this research investigates 520 customer-contact employees across 6 life insurance companies in Taiwan. Empirical data is used to examine the effects of job satisfaction, job involvement and job stress on customer-oriented behavior as well as the moderated effect of emotional intelligence on the relationship between job stress and customer-oriented behavior. Significant findings are: (1) job satisfaction and job involvement positively affect customer-oriented behavior; (2) job stress negatively affects customer-oriented behavior; (3) emotional intelligence positively moderates the relationship between job stress and customer-oriented behavior. Keywords: customer-contact employee, Customer-oriented behavior, emotional intelligence 摘 要 在 服 務 產 業 中, 第 一 線 員 工 之 顧 客 向 導 行 為 在 顧 客 決 策 過 程 中 是 相 當 重 要 的 本 研 究 調 查 520 位 來 自 於 6 家 台 灣 壽 險 公 司 的 第 一 線 員 工 實 證 工 作 滿 足 工 作 投 入 與 工 作 壓 力 對 於 顧 客 導 向 行 為 之 影 響, 同 時 亦 驗 證 情 緒 智 力 在 工 作 壓 力 與 顧 客 導 向 行 為 之 間 的 調 節 效 果 本 研 究 提 出 3 項 重 要 發 現, 包 括 (1) 工 作 滿 足 與 工 作 投 入 均 會 正 向 影 響 顧 客 導 向 行 為 ; (2) 工 作 壓 力 對 顧 客 導 向 行 為 則 產 生 反 向 影 響 ;(3) 情 緒 智 力 則 會 正 向 調 節 工 作 壓 力 對 顧 客 導 向 行 為 之 影 響 關 鍵 字 : 第 一 線 員 工 顧 客 導 向 行 為 情 緒 智 力 1

2 1. Introduction Since the intangible and interactive characteristics through service delivering process, customer-contact employees behavior plays a key role during customers decision making process. In fact, the customer-oriented behavior of customer-contact employees is important for service firms to make long-term profit [2, 37]. In recent years, the number of the companies which invested programs for enhancing customer-oriented behavior of customer-contact employees is growing rapidly [10, 35]. The boundary-spanning nature of service employees often results in some emotional or affective reactions during service delivering [29]. As the result, it is important to study the factors that can influence customer-oriented behavior of customer-contact employees. Previous researches have indicated that emotional or affective responses (e.g., job satisfaction, job stress) of customer-contact employees will influence their customer-oriented behavior [12, 17]. Furthermore, the extent to which employees show the customer-oriented behavior relies on the efforts that customer-contact employees engage in [34]. It is known that job-related factors would influence customer-oriented behavior. In addition, since customer-contact employees are emotional labors, the moderated effect of emotional intelligence is discussed in this research. Thus, in light of this research void, the two questions are examined: First, the test of the effects of job satisfaction, job involvement and job stress on customer-oriented behavior is validated. Second, the moderated effect of emotional intelligence on the relationship between job stress and customer-oriented behavior is further discussed. 2. Literature review and hypotheses In this section we will briefly review the literature concerning customer-oriented behavior. We will then discuss the effects of job satisfaction, job involvement and job stress on customer-oriented behavior as well as the moderated effect of emotional intelligence. 2.1 Customer-oriented behavior Our conceptualization of customer-oriented behavior is consistent with three works. First, Saxe and Weitz [34] suggest that customer-orientation is the degree to which an organization or its employees focus their efforts on understanding and satisfying customers. Second, Stock and Hoyer [41] view customer-oriented behavior as the extent to which service employees use their marketing concepts for helping customers to make purchase decisions as well as satisfying their needs. Third, Brown et al. [3] 2

3 operationalize customer-oriented behavior in terms of a tendency of employees to meet customer needs in job-related environment. Consistent with these views, we define customer-oriented behavior as the extent to which customer-contact employees use their marketing concepts for satisfying customers needs. 2.2 Job satisfaction and its effect on customer-oriented behavior We define job satisfaction as an extent of affective reaction to which customer-contact employees like their jobs [4, 11]. The affect theory of social exchange contends that emotions is a core feature of social exchange process, which individuals engage in to show reciprocal behaviors and support parties from whom they benefit [19]. The application of this theory can range from support among co-workers, information flows among firms as well as the relationships between customer-contact employees and customers [38]. Furthermore it is widely accepted that job satisfaction is a positive emotion [1, 39]. Since customer-contact employees can be benefited for salary or bonus from satisfying customers. According to the affect theory of social exchange, we believe that job satisfaction of customer-contact employees would have a positive effect on customer-oriented behavior. Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed: H1: Job satisfaction would positively affect customer-oriented behavior. 2.3 Job involvement and its effect on customer-oriented behavior We define job involvement as the extent to which customer-contact employees consider their job to be an essential part of their lives [15, 18]. We argue that job involvement positively affect customer-oriented behavior. Our rationales are as follows: Higher job involvement will lead to higher tendency of workaholic [25], and will be an effective predictor of higher job performance [16]. One might expect that customer-contact employees who have higher job involvement will tend to focus on job-related activities such as thinking of ways to service customers better rather than wasting time on non job-related activities [5, 31]. Thus we believe that higher job involvement would lead to higher customer-oriented behavior. Thus, we proposed H2: Job involvement would positively affect customer-oriented behavior. 2.4 Job stress and its effect on customer-oriented behavior We define job stress is an extent of harmful affective reaction to which service employees do not match the job requirement with their capabilities or resources themselves [22, 26].We expect job stress will negatively affect customer-oriented behavior. It is widely accepted that job environments of customer-contact employees are full of job stress [24], and it follows that job stress will decrease some job outcomes 3

4 performance such as productivity [33]. When job stress takes places, it means there is a poor fit between job requirement and service employees capabilities or resources. Since that, one might expect that job stress will deprive customer-contact employees of normal behavioral patterns, thereby in turn negatively affects job-related behavior such as the interactions between customers and themselves [13]. Therefore, we proposed H3: Job stress negatively affects customer-oriented behavior. 2.5 Emotional intelligence and its moderated effect Emotional intelligence can be defined as the abilities concerning the recognition and regulation of emotion in the self and others [23, 40]. We argue that customer-contact employees emotional inteligence would moderate the relationship between job stress and customer-oriented behavior. Specifically, customer-contact employees whose emotional inteligences are higher than others would have lighter negative effect from job stress to customer-oriented behavior. Our rationales are as follows: Emotional intelligence is a psychological mechanism that can prevent individuals from a harmful stress condition [23]. Some evidences revealed that the higher customer-contact employees emotional intelligence, the lower job stress they have [6, 27, 28]. Otherwise, emotional intelligence can be an important adaptive mechanism for helping individuals to adjust the interactions with their environment [28]. Thus, we expect that customer-contact employees with higher emotional intelligence would adjust the harmful affections to a good way, and would eventually diminish the influence from job stress to customer-oriented behavior. H4: Emotional intelligence would positively moderate the relationship between job stress and customer-oriented behavior. 3. Research method 3.1 Procedure and participants According to the typology developed by [21], life insurance sales personnel are characterized by the one of high degree of customer-contact employee types. So we chose life insurance sales personnel as the sample in this research, and then selected the top 6 life insurance companies which accounted for approximately 70% market shares in Taiwan. Questionnaires were then mailed to these companies. With the cooperation, life insurance personnel among these companies were asked to fill out the questionnaires with voluntary. Overall, of the 2000 questionnaires distributed, 858 were returned. Of the 858 questionnaires 520 were found to be valid, for a useable response 4

5 rate of 26%. 3.2 Measures All measures were 7-point Likert-type scales, ranging from strongly disagree value as 1 to strongly sagree value as 7. Each of the variables used to acces was based on the measurement as follows: Customer-oriented behavior. Participants were asked to complete 6 items regarding their customer-oriented behavior. These items which used to access customer-oriented behavior of the extent to which customer-contact employees satisfy customers needs were developed basedon Brown et al. [3]. Job Satisfaction. 6 items from Lichtenstein et al. [20] and Wolniak and Pascarella [42] were the measurement of job satisfaction. Three items were selected from each of their proposed subfacets (i.e., job autonomy and co-worker satisfaction). Job involvement. 6 items evaluating job involvement of participants were adopted from Lassk et al. [18]. The subfacets are time involvement and relationship involvement. Job stress. There were 6 items used to measure job stress of participants. These items were modified from Gellis, Kim and Hwang [8], Joiner [14] and Rothmann, Steyn and Mostert [32]. The subfacets are job demand and lack of support. Emotional intelligence. 12 items from Rahim and Minors [30] and Schutte et al. [36] were used to measure the emotional intelligence of participants. Four items were selected from each of the subfacets (i.e., self-awareness, self-regulation and others-awareness). 4. Results 4.1 Reliability and Validity We examined a 36-item, 5-construct questionnaire inthis research. Cronbach s alphas for these variables are presented in table 1 and were satisfactory (α>.70). We then conducted factor analysis for convergence validity testing. There are three criterions as follows: First, eigenvalues of factors should be greater than 1. Second, the loadings should be grater than 0.6. Third, the average proportions of variance explained must be greater than 60%. The results are displayed in table 2. It shows that the convergence validities of customer-oriented behavior, job satisfactory, job involvement, job stress and emotional intelligence are satisfactory. For the test of discriminate validity, we conducted two criterions proposed by Gaski and Nevin [7]. First, the correlation coefficient of any two variables must significantly lower than 1. Second, the correlation coefficient of any two variables should lower than the Cronbach s alphas of themselves. The results are showed in table 5

6 1, and the discriminate validities among these were satisfactory. Table 1: Correlation matrix and descriptive statistics Measure Mean COB **.65** -.59**.46** 2.JSA ** -.50**.35** 3.JIV **.36** 4.JSS ** 5.EI Note. Coefficient alpha reliability estimates are presented in bold along the diagonal. Customer-oriented behavior (COB), job satisfaction (JSA), job involvement (JIV), job stress (JSS) and emotional intelligence (EI). *p<0.05, **p<0.001 Table 2: Factor matrix and proportions of variance explained items COB JSA JIV JSS EI Variance explained 81.69% 75.68% 65.89% 65.09% 67.67% 4.2 Hierarchical moderator regression analysis Means and the correlation among variables are shown in table 1. We examined the data for potential systematic differences because of characteristics of life insurance personnel across 6 companies. Across 6 companies, participants were not different in terms of gender, χ2 (5, N=520) = 4.97, p =.419; age, χ2 (15, N=520) = 19.85, p =.178; job tenure, χ2 (25, N=520) = 33.60, p =.117. Given the no significant difference in terms of gender, age and job tenure, we then performed the hierarchical moderator regression analysis to test our hypotheses. It was conducted by entering the dependent variables (job satisfaction, job involvement and job stress) into model 1. The moderated term, created as the multiplication of job stress and emotional intelligence, was then entered into model 2. The results are displayed in Table 3. As we predicted, independent variables influenced customer-oriented behavior (R2=.648, p<0.001). Consistent with hypothesis 1, job satisfaction significant positively affects customer-oriented behavior (β =.499, t = , p<0.001). And as we expected, job involvement significant positively influences customer-oriented behavior (β =.292, t = 8.995, p<0.001). Furthermore, job stres significant negatively affects 6

7 customer-oriented behavior (β = -.228, t = , p<0.001). Therefore, H1, H2 and H3 were supported. Table 3: Results of hierarchical moderator regression analysis Independent Variables R 2 ΔR 2 ANOVA Coefficients F Sig. B Beta t Sig (Constant) Model 1 JSA JIV JSS (Constant) Model 2 JSA JIV JSS EI*JSS In support of H4, emotional intelligence was found to be a significant moderator between job stress and customer-oriented behavior (ΔR2=.0.007, p<0.05). The regression model can be written as COB =.442*JSA +.287*JIV -.258*JSS +.086*EI*JSS. Emotional inteligence (β =.086, t = 3.189, p= 0.02) positively moderates the relationship between job stress and customer-oriented behavior. H4 was supported. We then conducted the partial differential of COB on JSS. Then the regression model can be writen as δcob/δjss = EI. Thus, when emotional intelligence increased, the effect of job stress on customer-oriented behavior was decreased. Furthermore, given the inherent correlation between dependent variables, multicollinearity is tested by examining the variance inflation factor (VIF). It revealed that all VIF were lower than 10 (through 1.09 to 1.60). Multicollinearity, therefore, was not an issue in the preceding analysis [9]. 5.1 Discussions and implications 5. Conclusions Consistent with the affect theory of social exchanges, in this study we found that job satisfaction and job involvement can positively enhance customer-oriented behavior of customer-contact employee; job stress can negatively affect customer-oriented behavior. We also found evidence supporting an adaptive mechanism to explain why some customer contact employees may react more favorable customer-oriented behavior than others. That is, emotional intelligence was a significant moderator of the relationship between job stress and customer-oriented behavior. As the emotional intelligence increased, the higher emotional intelligence customer-contact employees 7

8 have the lighter influence of job stress on customer-oriented behavior. Because higher emotional intelligence affords them the ability to adjust their harmful affections (e.g., job stress), and thereby show the better customer-oriented behavior than others. Alternative, this study provides salient implications for service firms for developing customer-oriented behavior programs. More specifically, job satisfaction, job involvement, job stress and emotional intelligence play important role in customer-oriented behavior of service employees. This suggests that service firms can create favorable customer-oriented behavior employees through these variables. From this perspective, a program that can enhance job satisfaction, job involvement, and emotional intelligence as well as can diminish job stress will be a good instrument for service firms. We believe that this study provides meaningful insights into how affective responses affect customer-contact employees behavior as wel as how service firms can shape more favorable customer-contact employees. Furthermore, this research represents the first study to investigate the relationship between job involvement and customer-oriented behavior, and we further discuss the moderation effect of emotional intelligence on the relationship between job stress and customer-oriented behavior. We also believe that the results and practices of this study are valuable for service firms to adopt in the future. 5.2 Future research and study limitations There are other important customer-oriented behavior related variables apart from those investigated in our study that warrant future study. For example, personality of customer-contact employees should be investigated to access the effect or moderation effect on customer-oriented behavior. One limitation of this study was the cross-section survey; we suggest future research can conduct a longitude investigation to verify the casual relationship between job related variables and customer-oriented behavior. REFERENCES 1. Bateman, T. S. and Organ, D. W., 1983, Job satisfaction and the good soldier: The relationship between afect and employee citizenship, Academy of Management Journal, Vol.26, No.4, pp Bove, L. L. and Johnson, L. W., 2000, A customer-service worker relationship model, International Journal of Service Industry Management, Vol.11, No.5, pp Brwon, T. F., Mowen, J. C., Donavan, D. T. and Licata, J. W., 2002, The customer orientation of service workers: Personality trait effects on self-and supervisor performance ratings, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol.39, No.1, pp Buitendach, J. H. and De Wite, H., 2005, Job Insecurity, extrinsic and intrinsic 8

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