Firms with the ability to provide superior customer service can accrue significant competitive advantage and research suggests that frontline service employees' (FLSEs) actions have a considerable influence on the success of service operations. Yet, the high level of customer defections consistently attributed to poor and indifferent service suggests that many organizations are not placing sufficient emphasis on developing FLSEs to interact more effectively with customers. Although it is generally believed that human resource development enhances employee performance, relatively little is known about firms' approaches for developing and motivating FLSEs. We therefore examine the influence of service provider organizations' developmental practices on FLSE performance using data collected from 307 customer contact personnel. Our findings indicate that, in contrast to conventional wisdom, higher levels of employee development may not always yield the most beneficial outcomes.Often, frontline service employees are viewed as "expenses to be controlled rather than assets to be developed."Jim Dion, president of Dionco ConsultingIn highly competitive industries where the ability to provide superior customer service can accrue significant competitive advantage (
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive meta-analytic examination of the relationship between employee age and customer mistreatment. Drawing on socioemotional selectivity theory and taking the cross-cultural and cross-sectoral differences into account and making the country-level and occupation-level comparisons possible for uncovering when age matters, the role of employee age on decreasing customer mistreatment is examined.
Design/methodology/approach
The data comprises of 103 independent samples collected from 48,067 frontline employees. Random effects individual correction meta-analysis procedure is used to aggregate correlation coefficients and correct them for sampling, measurement and range restriction errors. Meta-regression is used for examining the impact of key moderators.
Findings
Results consistently show that frontline employee exposure to customer mistreatment is decreased with age. Regarding national differences, negative associations are stronger in low power distance countries. Age has more potential to provide high-quality relations with customers in healthcare, banking, compared to call centers and hospitality sectors.
Practical implications
Healthy customer relations with fewer customer mistreatments come with employee age. However, results warn service managers about cultural and industry-related boundary conditions such as power distance and service orientation expectations.
Originality/value
This study is the first meta-analysis on the relationship between two contemporary challenges in organizational frontlines: the aging workforce and customer mistreatment. By conducting comprehensive data collection and analyses, this study concludes that older employees, especially in low power distance cultures, bring wisdom to service environments.
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