Frontline Interactions Research Articles

The challenging meet between human and artificial knowledge. A systems-based view of its influences on firms-customers interaction

PurposeThis paper aims to recall the attention on a key challenge for customer relationship management related to the role of human agents in the management of the “switch point” for ensuring the effectiveness and efficiency in a customer-machine conversation.Design/methodology/approachThis study contributes to the discussion about the firms’ approach to artificial intelligence (AI) in frontline interactions under the conceptual umbrella provided by knowledge management studies.FindingsThis paper provides a theoretical model for clarifying the role of human intelligence (HI) in AI-based frontline interactions by highlighting the relevance of the actors’ subjectivity in the dynamics and perceptions of customer-machine conversations.Originality/valueAn AI-HI complementarity matrix is proposed in spite of the still dominant replacement view.

AI Service and Emotion

AI in service can be for routine mechanical tasks, analytical thinking tasks, or empathetic feeling tasks. We provide a conceptual framework for the customer, firm, and interactional use of AI for empathetic tasks at the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels. Emotions resulting from AI service interactions can include basic emotions (e.g., joy, sadness, and fear), self-conscious emotions (e.g., pride, guilt, embarrassment), and moral emotions (e.g., contempt, righteous anger, social disgust). These emotions are mostly likely to occur during frontline interactions in which both firms and customers use AI, a phenomenon called “AI as customer.” The analysis level of AI service and emotion can be at the macro-level in which AI is transforming the service economy into a feeling economy, at the meso-level in which firms can use “thoughtful AI” to make the employees’ and customers’ lives a little bit better by brightening their days, and at the micro-level in which customers can experience basic, self-conscious, and moral emotions from interactions with service AI.

Exploring the governance mechanisms for value co-creation in PSS business ecosystems

This paper explores the governance mechanisms for value co-creation when product–service systems (PSS) providers move into PSS business ecosystems. The PSS providers in our study applied both internal and external governance mechanisms to regulate value co-creation. Internally, they relied on formal organisational setups and informal coordination between product, service and digital divisions. Externally, they had strong relational governance mechanisms supported by appropriate contractual governance mechanisms. As frontline (field) interactions became an important factor for realising value co-creation, PSS providers also attempted to develop individual-based psychological governance to complement group-based relational governance. Our findings reveal five challenges in managing the governance mechanisms: (1) orchestrating all digital resources and capabilities, especially managing the incompatibility and isolation of different digital tools in product and service divisions; (2) managing all relations in one platform that can embrace customer relationship management (CRM), supplier relationship management (SRM) and form relations with emerging actors such as authorities; (3) designing appropriate contractual governance to measure co-created value from economic, societal and environmental perspectives, and govern data ownership and security; (4) managing the interplay between contractual and relational governance mechanisms during PSS agreement implementation; and (5) developing psychological governance for frontline staff. We direct PSS providers towards essential aspects that require attention when developing governance mechanisms by identifying these challenges. Moreover, identifying such challenges will allow policymakers, practitioners, and scholars to jointly develop standards, policies and guidelines in these increasingly prevalent ecosystem business arrangements.

Using hotel reviews to assess hotel frontline employees’ roles and performances

PurposeThis study aims to explore how marketers can use text mining to analyze actors, actions and performance effects of service encounters by building on the role theory. This enables hotel managers to use introduced methodology to measure and monitor frontline employees’ role behavior and optimize their service.Design/methodology/approachThe authors’ approach links text mining and importance-performance analysis with role theory’s conceptual foundations taking into account the hotel industry’s specifics to assess the effect of frontline hotel employees’ actions on consumer satisfaction and to derive specific management implications for the hospitality sector.FindingsThis study identifies different actors involved in hotel frontline interactions revealing distinct role behaviors that characterize consumers’ perspectives of service encounters with different role types associated with front-office employees. This research also identifies role performance related to role behavior to improve service encounters.Practical implicationsCustomer–employee interactions can be assessed by user-generated contents (UGC). Performance evaluations relate to frontline employee roles associated with distinct role scripts, whereby different hotel segments require tailored role designs. Insights of this study can be used for service optimization, market positioning as well as for improving human resource management practices in the hotel industry.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the service encounter literature by applying role theory in the text mining of UGC to assess frontline employees as actors and the effects of their actions on service quality delivery.

Is Police Misconduct Contagious? Non-trivial Null Findings from Dallas, Texas

ObjectivesUnderstanding if police malfeasance might be “contagious” is vital to identifying efficacious paths to police reform. Accordingly, we investigate whether an officer’s propensity to engage in misconduct is associated with her direct, routine interaction with colleagues who have themselves engaged in misbehavior in the past.MethodsRecognizing the importance of analyzing the actual social networks spanning a police force, we use data on collaborative responses to 1,165,136 “911” calls for service by 3475 Dallas Police Department (DPD) officers across 2013 and 2014 to construct daily networks of front-line interaction. And we relate these cooperative networks to reported and formally sanctioned misconduct on the part of the DPD officers during the same time period using repeated-events survival models.ResultsEstimates indicate that the risk of a DPD officer engaging in misconduct is not associated with the disciplined misbehavior of her ad hoc, on-the-scene partners. Rather, a greater risk of misconduct is associated with past misbehavior, officer-specific proneness, the neighborhood context of patrol, and, in some cases, officer race, while departmental tenure is a mitigating factor.ConclusionsOur observational findings—based on data from one large police department in the United States—ultimately suggest that actor-based and ecological explanations of police deviance should not be summarily dismissed in favor of accounts emphasizing negative socialization, where our study design also raises the possibility that results are partly driven by unobserved trait-based variation in the situations that officers find themselves in. All in all, interventions focused on individual officers, including the termination of deviant police, may be fruitful for curtailing police misconduct—where early interventions focused on new offenders may be key to avoiding the escalation of deviance.

Repeated Frontline Interactions in Retailing

Repeated Frontline Interactions in Retailing

An Investigation of Consumer Subjective Knowledge in Frontline Interactions

It is no secret that the consumer journey produces retail consumers who have varying levels of subjective knowledge about a purchase prior to a retail interaction. This observation leads to a common conclusion that the need for frontline employees (FLEs) in retail environments is diminishing. Nevertheless, retailers invest heavily in staffing and training FLEs. As such, understanding pre-encounter subjective knowledge and how FLEs should address it is critical, yet the topic is largely overlooked in the marketing literature. Thus, we investigate consumer subjective knowledge via an information diagnosticity lens to provide guidance on how subjective knowledge operates when the information in question is scarce/known, tacit/explicit, and specific/general. The results of three experiments reveal consumers can be classified as traditional, well-calibrated, or poorly-calibrated based on their subjective knowledge prior to meeting with an FLE – with each type requiring different FLE approaches to improve both consumers’ willingness to buy and acceptance of FLE recommendations.

Check-in Services and Passengers’ Impression of Airports in South-south Geopolitical Zone of Nigeria

The study examined check-in service quality attributes and passengers' impression of airports in the South-South geopolitical zone of Nigeria. The research was motivated by the desire to know how well passengers' impression of Nigerian airport service quality have been shaped by four check-in service attributes (competence of staff, politeness of staff, waiting time at check-in counters and interactions with passengers). The study used stratified random sampling to survey four hundred passengers at Port Harcourt International Airport and Margaret Ekpo International Airport. Data were collected using a five-point Likert scale questionnaire. The instrument was content-validated, while the Cronbach Alpha coefficient for the constructs gave reliability of 96.9 per cent. The data generated were analysed using mean rating and multiple linear regression analysis. The findings revealed that politeness of staff, waiting time at check-in counters and interactions with passengers significantly influenced passengers' impression of airports in the South-South geopolitical zone of Nigeria. The study recommended that Airport management should regularly train frontline staff on customer service communication skills; provide feedback mechanisms such as voice recorders and CCTV cameras to check front-line interactions with passengers, and automate the check-in process as is obtainable in developed countries to reduce the waiting time at check-in counters. These will ensure and improve passengers’ perception and patronage of aviation services in the zone, locally and internationally.

Cultural humility in libraries

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to introduce the idea of cultural humility, distinguish it from cultural competence and explore how it fits within librarianship. Design/methodology/approach The authors use an interdisciplinary exploration of the concept of humility to understand what cultural humility means and how it differs from cultural competence and other approaches to intercultural communication in libraries. Findings Despite some reservations with the term itself, the authors find that a practice of cultural humility is more appropriate to front-line interactions in library contexts than cultural competence models. Practical implications Libraries looking to address issues in intercultural communication and services to multicultural populations will find an approach that may be better suited to their contexts than prevailing models of cultural competency. Social implications Librarians need to commit to redressing the power imbalances and other structural issues that interfere with library service, for the benefit of the patrons, the library and librarians themselves. Originality/value While cultural humility is increasingly being used in librarianship, there has not been a systematic exploration of the concept and how it applies to library contexts.

Neoliberal technologies of social protection: affects and policy implementation

ABSTRACT In the context of Polanyi’s ‘double movement’ of market forces and social protection this article explores the work of state agents and processes of subjectivation at the workplace according to the contemporary social policy paradigm of activation. We exemplify the transformation of welfare institutions and policies in the neoliberal period through one of the major ‘disruptive strains’ of self-regulating markets: unemployment, and we problematize the recent marketization of public employment services and their affective treatment of jobseekers as customers. Our approach combines Polanyi’s framework with Foucault’s corresponding theory on state power and governmentality to show how neoliberal governance demands entrepreneurial and affective skills of state officials to support and motivate their ‘customers’. We argue that the subjectivation of these neo-bureaucrats results in a self-government of ‘affective entrepreneurialism’ and in the marketization of social protection. Our theoretical considerations rest on empirical evidence about work practices and frontline interactions of employment agents in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

A Systematic Review of Artificial Intelligence and Robots in Value Co-creation: Current Status and Future Research Avenues

As artificial intelligence (AI) and robots are increasingly taking place in practical service solutions, it is necessary to understand technology in value co-creation. We conducted a systematic literature review on the topic to advance theoretical analysis of AI and robots in value co-creation. By systematically reviewing 61 AI and robotics articles, which have been published in top marketing and service research journals, we identified four themes in literature, namely, generic field advancement, supporting service providers, enabling resource integration between service providers and beneficiaries, and supporting beneficiaries’ well-being. With the identification of the first set of literature on AI and robots in value co-creation, we push forward an important sub-field of value co-creation literature. In addition, to advance the field, we suggest building on actor–network theory and science and technology studies to understand the agency of technology in value co-creation. Considering that technology has agency, it opens new interesting research avenues around shopping bots and human-to-non-human frontline interaction that are likely to influence resource integration, customer engagement and value co-creation in the future. We also encourage our colleagues to conduct postphenomenological research to be better geared for analysing how technology (including AI and robots) mediates the individual experience of value.

Practices of activation in frontline interactions: Coercion, persuasion, and the role of trust in activation policies in Germany

AbstractFollowing Michael Lipsky's well‐known argument that policy is made in the daily encounters between street‐level bureaucracy and citizens, a growing body of research emphasizes that actors and organizations delivering social and labor‐market policy play a crucial role in welfare‐state politics. Using qualitative data collected at three local employment agencies in Germany, this article explores worker‐client relations as a crucial mechanism through which activation policies are translated into practice. The analysis investigates how caseworkers define their role and their relationships with clients. The findings show that it is essential for caseworkers to achieve client compliance. In such a context, building relationships of trust is a strategic instrument in overcoming possible barriers to co‐operation in the caseworker‐client interaction. Caseworkers develop strategies to create the impression of trustworthiness and to motivate both unemployed clients and employers to become trust‐givers in the caseworker‐client relation. While research has often stressed the dichotomy between disciplining and enabling elements of activation policies, our explorative study shows that persuasion and trust‐building are a further important dimension of the frontline delivery of activation policies. These strategies reflect the importance of emotional aspects of frontline work.

No Man is an Island: the Effect of Social Presence on Negative Word of Mouth Intention in Service Failures

Human life experience is constantly shaped by the impact of the presence of others. In this paper, using five studies, we demonstrate that social presence plays a crucial role in how consumers respond to a service failure. Specifically, studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that social presence prompts higher negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) intentions among consumers after a service failure compared with when they are alone—and that this effect is driven by a frustration-aggression mechanism. Study 3 further shows that self-affirmation can effectively mitigate the social presence effect by suppressing frustration-aggression. Finally, studies 4a and 4b reveal that a sense of entitlement critically moderates the effects of social presence such that participants primed with entitlement show stronger effects of social presence compared with no entitlement prime. These findings provide intriguing insights into the underlying process of social presence effects on NWOM intention and have important theoretical implications for the literatures of service failure, WOM, and social presence, as well as important managerial implications to help marketers manage their frontline interactions with consumers, especially after a service failure.

Longitudinal assessment of high-speed rail service delivery, satisfaction and operations: A study of Taiwan and Korea systems

This article compares Taiwan and Korea high speed rail systems to identify service factors that affect their long-term development. Data were collected by questionnaires and interviews administered over several years to study passenger travel behavior and perceptions of service quality. Analysis results indicate that improving operational effectiveness requires enhanced service quality and that Taiwan High Speed Rail (THSR) passengers are very concerned about facility of infrastructure services. In contrast, the main concern of Korea Train eXpress (KTX) passengers is frontline staff interaction. Notably, the data show that THSR passenger satisfaction increased steadily to levels superior to those expressed by KTX passengers. Another finding is that, in terms of resource allocation, both Taiwan and Korea should improve the handling of passenger complaints, provide improved scheduling information, and strive to improve arrival and departure punctuality. The contribution of this study is the development of a systematic method of assessing the long-term performance of high-speed rail transport services, by which management units can adjust operating strategies to continuously improve services. The analysis results can facilitate the THSR and KTX to formulating planning and operational strategies that can achieve the goal of sustainable operations.

Getting Smart

Smart technologies are rapidly transforming frontline employee-customer interactions. However, little academic research has tackled urgent, relevant questions regarding such technology-empowered frontline interactions. The current study conceptualizes (1) smart technology use in frontline employee-customer interactions, (2) smart technology–mediated learning mechanisms that elevate service effectiveness and efficiency performance to empower frontline interactions, and (3) stakeholder interaction goals as antecedents of smart technology–mediated learning. We propose that emerging smart technologies, which can substitute for or complement frontline employees’ (FLEs) efforts to deliver customized service over time, may help resolve the long-standing tension between service efficiency and effectiveness because they can learn or enable learning from and across customers, FLEs, and interactions. Drawing from pragmatic and deliberate learning theories, the authors conceptualize stakeholder learning mechanisms that mediate the effects of frontline interaction goals on FLEs’ and customers’ effectiveness and efficiency outcomes. This study concludes with implications for research and practice.

Correction to Mikolon, Kreiner, and Wieseke (2015).

Reports an error in "Seeing You Seeing Me: Stereotypes and the Stigma Magnification Effect" by Sven Mikolon, Glen E. Kreiner and Jan Wieseke (Journal of Applied Psychology, Advanced Online Publication, Dec 14, 2015, np). In the article, Table 2 contained a production-related formatting error. Values from column 11 onward were shifted upwards in the table. All versions of this article have been corrected. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2015-56319-001.) Despite an increased interest in the phenomenon of stigma in organizations, we know very little about the interactions between those who are stigmatized and those who stigmatize them. Integrating both the perceptions of the stigmatized worker and the stigmatizing customer into one model, the present study addresses this gap. It examines the role of stereotypes held by customers of stigmatized organizations and metastereotypes held by the stigmatized workers themselves (i.e., their shared beliefs of the stereotypes customers associate with them) in frontline exchanges. To do so, data regarding frontline workers (vendors) of homeless-advocate newspapers from 3 different sources (vendors, customers, trained observers) were gathered. Multilevel path-analytic hypotheses tests reveal (a) how frontline workers' prototypicality for a stigmatized organization renders salient a stigma within frontline interactions and (b) how stereotypes by customers and metastereotypes by frontline workers interact with each other in such contacts. The results support a hypothesized interaction between frontline workers' metastereotypes and customers' stereotypes-what we call the "stigma magnification effect". The study also derives important practical implications by linking stigma to frontline workers' discretionary financial gains. (PsycINFO Database Record

Seeing you seeing me: Stereotypes and the stigma magnification effect.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 101(5) of Journal of Applied Psychology (see record 2016-21000-001). In the article, Table 2 contained a production-related formatting error. Values from column 11 onward were shifted upwards in the table. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Despite an increased interest in the phenomenon of stigma in organizations, we know very little about the interactions between those who are stigmatized and those who stigmatize them. Integrating both the perceptions of the stigmatized worker and the stigmatizing customer into one model, the present study addresses this gap. It examines the role of stereotypes held by customers of stigmatized organizations and metastereotypes held by the stigmatized workers themselves (i.e., their shared beliefs of the stereotypes customers associate with them) in frontline exchanges. To do so, data regarding frontline workers (vendors) of homeless-advocate newspapers from 3 different sources (vendors, customers, trained observers) were gathered. Multilevel path-analytic hypotheses tests reveal (a) how frontline workers' prototypicality for a stigmatized organization renders salient a stigma within frontline interactions and (b) how stereotypes by customers and metastereotypes by frontline workers interact with each other in such contacts. The results support a hypothesized interaction between frontline workers' metastereotypes and customers' stereotypes-what we call the "stigma magnification effect". The study also derives important practical implications by linking stigma to frontline workers' discretionary financial gains. (PsycINFO Database Record

Towards a Multi‐level Approach on Frontline Interactions in the Public Sector: Institutional Transformations and the Dynamics of Real‐time Interactions

AbstractThis study develops a multi‐level approach on frontline interactions in the public sector. Previous research suggests that detailed analyses of frontline interactions are essential to our understanding of how welfare services take shape when policies and rules are applied and negotiated in individual cases. The dynamics and performances of real‐time interactions have, however, rarely been analyzed as such. This study shows how the methods developed in the field of Conversation Analysis can contribute to this research. Our multi‐level approach integrates analyses of the policy‐ and institutional transformations that shape conditions for frontline interactions; and analyses of how policies and rules are evoked, negotiated and reshaped in the turn‐by‐turn organization and performances of interaction. The approach is applied on an analysis of how rules regarding financial aid are applied in an authority highly affected by changes in welfare policy towards standardization and detailed regulations. The empirical case is the Swedish Board for Study Support. The empirical study includes analyses of documents, interviews and analyses of taped telephone conversations. The study shows how institutional arrangements of standardization, detailed regulations, monitoring and depersonalization, structure the frontline work and shape narrow frames for officials' discretion in interactions with clients. The study also shows how rules are invoked and negotiated in recurrent practices in the interaction: in the careful design of decisions; in the investigations of alternatives and exceptions from the rules in order to find solutions to the client's problems. The analyses of concrete interactional practices clearly indicate that also a rule‐governed work dominated by task discretion involves recurrent negotiations, flexibility and local policy‐making.

A multidimensional model of marketing culture and performance

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine a multidimensional model of marketing culture and performance in tourism restaurants operating in Jordan. The paper introduces a model proposing certain associations between Webster’s (1990) marketing culture dimensions and attempts to underline how such associations affect restaurants’ performance.Design/methodology/approach– A structured and self-administered survey was used, targeting managers and employees of tourism restaurants operating in Jordan. A sample of 334 tourism restaurants’ managers and employees were involved in the survey. A series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to assess the research constructs dimensions, unidimensionality, validity and composite reliability. Structural path model analysis was also used to test the hypothesised interrelationships of the research model.Findings– The empirical findings indicate that the marketing culture dimensions are seven rather than six, as proposed by Webster’s (1990) original model: service quality, interpersonal relationships, management–front-line interaction, selling task, organisation, internal communication and innovativeness. “Organisation” had positively and significantly affected “interpersonal relationships”. “Interpersonal relationships” had positively and significantly affected each of “management–front-line interaction”, “selling task” and “internal communications”. On the other hand, each of “management–front-line interaction”, “selling task” and “internal communications” had positively and significantly affected “innovativeness”. However, “innovativeness” itself had positively and significantly affected each of “service quality” and restaurant performance. Finally, “service quality” had positively and significantly affected restaurants’ performance.Research limitations/implications– Only seven dimensions of marketing culture were examined; meanwhile, there could also be other dimensions that affect restaurants’ performance. This paper has also examined the effect of a multidimensional model of marketing culture on restaurants’ financial performance only; the use of other types of non-financial measures could yield different results. The fact that paper’s sample consisted only of Jordanian restaurants further limits its generalisation potential.Practical implications– The paper reinforces the importance of sound marketing culture to Jordanian tourism restaurants. It further underlines the importance of several marketing culture dimensions, particularly those related to employees’ selection, development and communication. Further, the paper emphasises the particular importance of front-office employees to the success of Jordanian restaurants. Tourism restaurants’ managers and executives can benefit from such findings for designing their marketing culture strategies to achieve long-term performance objectives.Originality/value– This paper represents the first empirical attempt to examine the interrelationships between marketing culture dimensions introduced by Webster (1990). Accordingly, it should shed more light on the dynamics of marketing culture within service organisations, and how such dynamics affect organisations’ performance. Further, the paper is the first of its kind to study marketing culture dynamics in the context of Jordanian tourism restaurants industry. International tourism restaurants planning to expand their operations in Jordan’s tourism industry have now valuable empirical evidence concerning the marketing culture dimensions and their effect on performance.

Ethical violations in the clinical setting: the hidden curriculum learning experience of Pakistani nurses.

BackgroundThe importance of the hidden curriculum is recognised as a practical training ground for the absorption of medical ethics by healthcare professionals. Pakistan’s healthcare sector is hampered by the exclusion of ethics from medical and nursing education curricula and the absence of monitoring of ethical violations in the clinical setting. Nurses have significant knowledge of the hidden curriculum taught during clinical practice, due to long working hours in the clinic and front-line interaction with patients and other practitioners.MethodsThe means of inquiry for this study was qualitative, with 20 interviews and four focus group discussions used to identify nurses’ clinical experiences of ethical violations. Content analysis was used to discover sub-categories of ethical violations, as perceived by nurses, within four pre-defined categories of nursing codes of ethics: 1) professional guidelines and integrity, 2) patient informed consent, 3) patient rights, and 4) co-worker coordination for competency, learning and patient safety.ResultsTen sub-categories of ethical violations were found: nursing students being used as adjunct staff, nurses having to face frequent violence in the hospital setting, patient reluctance to receive treatment from nurses, the near-absence of consent taken from patients for most non-surgical medical procedures, the absence of patient consent taking for receiving treatment from student nurses, the practice of patient discrimination on the basis of a patient’s socio-demographic status, nurses withdrawing treatment out of fear for their safety, a non-learning culture and, finally, blame-shifting and non-reportage of errors.ConclusionImmediate and urgent attention is required to reduce ethical violations in the healthcare sector in Pakistan through collaborative efforts by the government, the healthcare sector, and ethics regulatory bodies. Also, changes in socio-cultural values in hospital organisation, public awareness of how to conveniently report ethical violations by practitioners and public perceptions of nurse identity are needed.