COVID, Customer Loyalty, and Sacrificial HR Strategies Among Customer Service Representatives - Evidence Across Industries

Authors

  • Robert Pellegrino Tarleton State University
  • Kimberly Pellegrino Florida Memorial University

Keywords:

Customer Service, organizational justice

Abstract

Customer service is a straightforward concept and its effects are widely studied and well known.  No one would disagree that good customer service has a crucial and positive impact on firm profitability (Goodwin, 1992) so why do so many firms continue to provide poor customer service?  Research indicates that instead of viewing customer service as an external customer issue, perhaps it should be viewed as an internal human resource issue. In other words, managers may reap what they sow by not properly managing employee relationships and then expecting these same employees to turn around and successfully manage customer relationships. Using justice theory, this study explores the management of customer service representatives. Specifically, a national survey was conducted of call center managers utilizing measures for the three types of organizational justice: distributive, procedural, and interactional. Call center managers from many different service industries responded including travel/hospitality, telecommunications, retail/catalog, health care, insurance, and financial services. Results of the study indicate that justice theory can be used to explain a significant amount of employee commitment in call center operations. The significance of these findings provides a possible explanation as to why good customer service seems to be disappearing. Can any manager expect CSRs to provide good customer relationship management when managers are not properly handling employee relationships?

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Published

2022-08-29

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Section

ABR Journal Articles