Customer‐Initiated Support and Employees’ Proactive Customer Service Performance: A Multilevel Examination of Proactive Motivation as the Mediator

Abstract

Drawing on the proactive motivation model and theories of motivation, the current study examined customer‐initiated support as an antecedent of employees’ proactive customer service performance (PCSP) and investigated the mediating role of proactive motivations and the moderating role of serving culture. We conducted two multilevel studies to test the proposed hypotheses. In study 1, we collected diary data from 158 nurses across 10 working days, and results showed that the relationship between nurses’ daily experience of customer‐initiated support and their PCSP was mediated by self‐efficacy, work meaning, and positive affect. In study 2, we collected multilevel multi‐source data from 373 nurses nested within 80 units and found that nurses’ experience of customer‐initiated support was positively related to their supervisor‐rated PCSP via role‐breadth self‐efficacy and work meaning, but not through positive affect. Further, team‐level serving culture strengthened the positive relationship between customer‐initiated support and role‐breadth self‐efficacy. These findings shed light on understanding the effect of customer‐initiated support as an external factor on prompting service employees’ proactive behaviors, potential motivational mediators to explain the underlying mechanisms, and potential boundary conditions inside of service organizations to strengthen the positive effects of customer‐initiated support.