Engaging customers with employees in service encounters: Linking employee and customer service engagement behaviors through relational energy and interaction cohesion

Abstract

Purpose

Keeping both employees and customers highly engaged has become a critical issue for service firms, especially for high-contact and highly customized services. Therefore, it is essential to engage employees and customers during service interactions for better service outcomes. However, past research on employee and customer engagement has primarily focused on brands and organizations. Little research has concentrated on service interactions as the objects of engagement. To fill this research gap, this study aims to clarify and define service engagement behaviors (SEBs), identify various employee and customer SEBs and develop a model to investigate the relationships between these behaviors.

Design/methodology/approach

A theoretical framework was developed based on social contagion theory and service-dominant (S-D) logic to explore the effects of employee SEBs on customer SEBs through customer perceptions of relational energy and interaction cohesion. Dyadic survey data collected from 293 customer-employee pairs in various high-contact and highly customized service industries were examined through structural equation modeling.

Findings

Results show that employee SEBs (service role involvement, customer orientation behavior and customer empowerment behavior) positively influence relational energy and interaction cohesion, which in turn affect customer SEBs (service exploration behavior and service coordination behavior).

Originality/value

This study represents pioneering research to conceptualize SEBs. Different from the extant literature on engagement, SEBs capture the proactive and collaborative engagement behaviors of employees and customers in service interactions. Various employee and customer SEBs were identified and an empirical model was proposed and tested to investigate the effect of employee SEBs on customer SEBs through relational energy and interaction cohesion.

Citation

Liang, H.-Y., Chu, C.-Y. and Lin, J.-S.C. (2020), "Engaging customers with employees in service encounters: Linking employee and customer service engagement behaviors through relational energy and interaction cohesion", Journal of Service Management, Vol. 31 No. 6, pp. 1071-1105. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOSM-06-2018-0175