Fostering quality customer service during Covid-19: The role of managers’ oral language, employee work engagement, and employee resilience

Abstract

By integrating speech act and conservation of resources (COR) theories, the link between motivating language (ML) and commitment to quality customer service (CQCS) was tested. Furthermore, work engagement was introduced as a mediator and employee resilience as a moderator. Partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was applied to analyze the data collected from 424 employees in the hotel industry in Thailand. ML has direct and indirect effects on CQCS via employee work engagement. Employee resilience moderates the relationship between ML, work engagement, and CQCS. Overall, the findings indicate the use of ML, employee resilience, and engaged employees to generate CQCS in the hotel industry in Thailand. The study's novelty is that it provides greater insight into how ML, employee resilience, and engaged employees affect quality customer service in the hotel industry in Thailand. The findings contribute to COR and speech act theories by examining the direct outcomes of ML, i.e., CQCS, and how ML is more effective when employee resilience is a boundary condition. Practical and theoretical implications are described.