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The Role of Emotions The Role of Emotions in Service Encountersin Service Encounters

Anna S Matila; Cathy A Enz

Journal of Service Research; 2002; 4,4; 268-277.

Jane 2008/2/25

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Outline Introduction

Importance of emotionsDisplayed emotions and customization

Method (sampling and measures)ResultsDiscussion

Incongruency between customer and employee evaluations of the same encounter

Managerial implicationsLimitations and future research directions

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Introduction (1/2)The behaviors of frontline service providers are crucial to customer evaluations of service.Service encounter = a key strategic competitive weapon

Temporal duration of the interaction (short duration)Emotional content (low affective content)Spatial proximity of service provider and customer (public encounters)

→ the vast majority of our daily interactions

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Introduction (2/2)Purpose: extend our understanding of the impact of customer emotion and mood on customers’ assessments of both

the service provider (service encounter)the overall service experience

Most common encounter situationsBrief and nonpersonal, e.g. hotel checkouts

Focus on : the affective component of the encounter

Structured observation by multiple raters along with customer and employee self-report.

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Importance of emotions (1/3)The role of emotion is gaining attention as a central element in understanding the consumption experience.

Scarce empirical investigations

Mood statesDefinition: mild affective states that are easily induced.

Operation: biasing our memory and thinking process toward mood congruency at automatic level.

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Importance of emotions (2/3)For dyadic interaction, service encounter is influenced by the mood states of both

Customer ↔ Service provider (customer-contact personnel)

Presence, message content, interpersonal relationship and so on

Emotions are social rather than isolated, individual processes.

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Importance of emotions (3/3)

H1: customers’ self-declared mood state immediately after the service encounter will be positively associated with their evaluation of the service encounter and the overall assessment of the firm.

Service characteristics for emotional responsesPrevious

workHigh-contact service, e.g. medical or other professional service

Thisstudy

Mundane, brief service encounter, e.g. hotel checkout

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Displayed emotions and customization (1/2)

To implement this personalization strategy, contact employee use a variety of transaction-defining cues.

Leisure vs. business traveler

Displayed emotionsA form of communication between a sender and receiver

Convey important information via nonverbal cues

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Displayed emotions and customization (2/2)

Prior work in experimental psychology: people’s facial expressions are consistent with their internal feelings.

H2: customers’ displayed emotion during the service encounter will be positively associated with their evaluation of the service encounterand the overall assessment of the firm.

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Displayed emotions and customization (3/3)

Recent work has further developed the idea of emotional contagion in which individuals automatically mimic and synchronize displayed emotions

Align the parties’ feelings→ emotional convergence

H3: employee assessments of the service encounter will be positively associated with the customer assessments of the same encounter.

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Method-sampling (1/4)Sampling frame

2 first-class hotels in Singapore

3-month data collection

2 trained research assistants observe every third customer’s and the corresponding employee’s behaviors to record displayed emotion.

Customers were asked to fill out a short survey after the interactions.

Customer Employee

Sample size 200 21

Average age 39 27

Gender ratio

70%men

71% women

Ethnicity Asian/ Caucasian All Asian

P.S. 53% for business

Context without suspicion or obtrusion

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Method-measures (2/4)Selected from previous studies from marketing, management, and psychology:

1. Customer’s mood state• A four-item mood short-form with 5-point

Likert-type scale

2. Displayed emotions• Composed of eye contact, smiling, and

thanking behaviors

3. Service encounter evaluation• A five-item scale

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Method-measures (3/4)4. Overall assessment of the firm

• Five items measured on a bipolar, 7-point scale• Conduct a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to

determine if these items capture overall measure.

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Method-measures (4/4)5. Employee’s assessment of

performance• A single item question on a 7-point scale

6. Control variables• Gender

• Ethnicity

• Duration of service encounter

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Result (1/4) Hierarchical regression analyses were used to test H1 and H2, taking into consideration the effects of the three control variables.

Customers’ service encounter evaluations

Customers’ overall evaluations

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Result (2/4)Service encounter evaluations

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Result (3/4)Overall evaluations

Fail to reach

statistical significance

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Result (4/4)H1 and H2 were supported.

The faster the encounter, the more positively the customer evaluated the encounter

not sig. in overall assessment of the hotel

The gender and the ethnicity of the customer-employee pairs had no sig. effect.

H3 was not supported.

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Discussion (1/3)Objective: examine in brief, nonpersonalservice encounters taking place in public how customer mood state and displayed emotion affected customers’ evaluations of encounter and overall consumption experience.

The multisourse, multimethod design of this investigation enables us to advance the theory of affective responses at a more typical transaction-specific level.

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Discussion (2/3)Contribution of this study

1. Consistent with prior research positing that mood effects are likely in service encounter.

2. Revealing that affective responses influence customers’ encounter-level evaluations even in a context of brief and mundane service encounters.

3. Suggesting that observations of the customer’s expressed emotions can be used to accurately predict the customer’s assessment of the service provider’s performance.

Helpful cues to customize the service delivery

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Discussion (3/3)Incongruency between customer and employee evaluations of the same encounter

Using different criteria to evaluate performance or have little time to actually read the emotions of customer.

To improve service quality, many contemporary service organizations have turned to technology.

Effectively deliver task and focus on reading emotional cues or become more likely to “catch” the emotional display of the customer.

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Managerial implicationsSuccessful customization requires that frontline employees actively recognize the subtle cues from the customer and then adapt the delivery accordingly.

Changing “script”

1. Develop a portfolio of diagnostic cues that customers typically display in various situations.

2. Educate the frontline employees to be aware of customer expectations regarding emotional responses.

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LimitationsUsing self-report surveys raises bias.

Harman’s(1967) one-factor test for common method variance failed to reveal a general factor.

Field study design did not permit preencounter data collection on:

mood state

the manipulation of the mood state of either the employee or the customer

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Future research directionsGather preencounter mood by

measuring preconsumption affect

manipulating consumers’ mood states in a lab setting

Extend to other types of service

How to train customer-contact employees to interpret customers’nonverbal cues?

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Q & A“To improve service quality, many contemporary service organizations have turned to technology.”

Effectively deliver task and focus on reading emotional cues

What else technology can be used to help the employees focus on customers’ emotional responses in service encounter? How?

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