Understanding a climate for customer service

Abstract

With the service industry ever expanding and more options to spend consumer dollars, a focus on customer service is becoming more important as a differentiator for a successful service organization. This study looked at the possibility that organizations can structure their companies and treat their employees in such a way to increase the strength of a customer service climate and increase the attitudes of their employees, which may lead to better service performance. In addition, the personality variable of customer service orientation was considered as a possible moderator between service climate and employee attitudes. Organizations were sampled from a variety of industries, including governments, hospitality, and educational institutions. Respondents within each company (which included several service employees and one manager or supervisor) completed a self-report survey on the structure of the organization, perceived organizational support, service climate, customer service orientation, and attitudes. The final sample included 211 respondents from 46 organizations. The data were aggregated to the organizational level. Results showed strong evidence for a relationship between perceived organizational support and service climate, as well as between some structural aspects of an organization and service climate, specifically centralization of decision-making and the number of departments/divisions in an organization. In addition, service climate was correlated with aggregated employee attitudes of job satisfaction, job involvement, and affective organizational commitment. Mediation analysis indicated that service climate partially mediated relationships between perceived organizational support and employee attitudes, as well as between organizational structure and employee attitudes. Average customer service orientation did not moderate the relationship between service climate and employee attitudes. Individual-level analysis did show some moderation, such that the relationship between service climate and both job involvement and affective organizational commitment was stronger for employees with higher levels of customer service orientation than for those with lower customer service orientation. Implications of this study to organizational theory and practice are discussed.