Turn Away from the Dark Side: Exploring Positive Customer Feedback (An Abstract)

Abstract

This paper extends the understanding of positive customer feedback. Technological advances suggest future trends in customer feedback management will encompass ever advanced methods of data capture and analysis. Thus, feedback is increasingly likely to contain both negative and positive sentiment, as opposed to the predominantly isolated negative content which researchers and practitioners have historically focused on. By comparing and contrasting frontline employees’ and customer’s perspectives, we develop a deeper understanding of the main elements and characteristics of positive customer feedback, its various impacts, and the perceived importance of this phenomenon for both actors. Exploratory research was conducted using a novel integrated methodological approach combining two well-established qualitative techniques: structured laddering interviews and two significant components of the Zaltman metaphor elicitation technique (ZMET) (Zaltman 1997) (unstructured in-depth questions and the visual projective technique). This dual approach enabled the identification and discernment of deeper meanings that customers and FLEs associate with their particular perceptions of positive customer feedback. Forty participants (20 customers, 20 employees) were interviewed using snowball sampling (Groth et al. 2009). Customer participants were customers of various service industries including retail, hospitality, and tourism, ensuring that we gathered FLE perceptions of a range of spontaneously received feedback, communicated in different scenarios and forms. Employee participant inclusion criterion was that they had a working experience as FLEs in a service industry. Understanding of positive customer feedback is extended beyond the current literature (i.e., gratitude, compliments) via the identification of nine characteristics and a number of associated impacts on both customers and frontline employees. Both actors share similar understanding of positive customer feedback; however, the importance of the various elements and subsequent impacts varies between the two. The study contributes to a holistic understanding of customer feedback by countering the dominant focus on the “dark side” and proposes a complimentary view of the positive, with implications for management of positive service encounters. The positive consequences identified suggest that managers should engineer processes and develop an exchange culture designed to increase opportunities for customers to give employees more, positive, feedback. We contend that with changes in technology and society, now is the time to rebalance this negative approach with an increased focus on positive customer feedback.