Abstract
Two studies were conducted to test the impact of customer dissatisfaction and social status on service performance. Study 1 was a scenarios study showing that the negative impact of customer dissatisfaction on self-esteem was stronger for high-status customers compared to low-status customers. Study 2 was a field experiment involving 50 telephone service interactions with retail clothing store employees. Results show that the negative impact of dissatisfaction on civility was stronger for high-status customers compared with low-status customers. The results highlight the gap between organizational policies regarding the management of customer dissatisfaction and front-line employees’ actual reactions to informal expressions of dissatisfaction, as well as the impact of social status on the quality of service provided to customers.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 153-169 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Service Business |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 15 Mar 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2018, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.
Keywords
- Civility
- Customer satisfaction
- Feedback
- Service performance
- Social status
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Business and International Management
- Strategy and Management