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Service quality in the USA has become a frustrating and unsatisfying experience. Recent indicators suggest customer satisfaction with service has been steadily declining. The financial services sector is no exception. Existing research indicates credit union customers are more satisfied with service quality than bank customers. Current studies also suggest service quality and employee satisfaction are linked to customer satisfaction. Surveys were administered to bank and credit union employees about service quality they receive from their managers. The results did not support the study’s hypothesis that credit union managers would receive higher scores than bank managers. However, the results and implications are important for researchers and practitioners interested in improving service quality at banks and credit unions.

Drawing on conservation of resources (CoR) and speech act theories, the authors tested the relationship between managers’ motivating language (ML) and employee service quality and psychological relatedness and competence as mediating variables between their associations.

Using a convenient sampling technique, the authors collected 366 hotel employees’ opinions in Malaysia and analysed them in partial least squares-structural equation modelling.

Three forms of ML, psychological competence and relatedness correlate with employees’ service quality. Although direction-giving language is correlated with competence, empathetic and meaning-making language are not; thus, competence only mediates the relationship between direction-giving language and service quality. Three types (direction-giving, empathetic and meaning-making) of managers’ communication are correlated with relatedness; thus, relatedness mediates the association between the three types of language and service quality.

Hospitality managers are encouraged to enhance psychological relatedness and competence by practising an appropriate ML. Psychological relatedness and competence are significant mechanisms that enlighten the effects of supervisory communicant on service quality, indicating employees’ need satisfaction should be improved.

Our study contributes to speech act and CoR theories by explaining the relationship between ML, psychological relatedness, competence and service quality.

This study aims to test the relationship between emotional labor and service quality of the frontline employees of Chinese restaurants during the coronavirus disease pandemic (COVID-19). This study further investigated the mediating role of work fatigue (WF) and the moderating role of supervisor–subordinate Guanxi (SSG).

The authors used a time-lag approach to gather data from a sample of 365 frontline staff members working in Chinese restaurants. All hypotheses were tested using SPSS and AMOS.

First, restaurant frontline employees’ deep acting was associated with higher service quality, whereas surface acting leads to lower service quality. Second, WF mediated the relationship between emotional labor and service quality. Third, SSG moderated the impact of emotional labor on WF during COVID-19.

All variables measured in this study were self-reported by restaurant frontline employees, which may increase the risk of common-method bias. However, this study enriches the literature on emotional labor, WF and SSG during COVID-19.

COVID-19 has severely affected the hotel, restaurant and catering sector and especially the psychological state and the work performance of frontline employees. Restaurant managers should implement some measures to improve employees’ service quality during COVID-19.

The present findings show that restaurant frontline employees adopted various emotional labor strategies when they were faced with higher than usual job demands and the risk of infection during COVID-19.

The objective of this paper is to test a selection of hypothesized relationships between: employees' perceived service quality; employees' turnover intentions; role clarity; and empowerment and coaching.

Drawing from theory, this paper develops a set of hypothesized relationships. The data collection is based on a survey with a sample of 1,076 frontline employees in service organizations.

There are indications that employees' perceived service quality has a direct negative effect on employees' turnover intentions. The effect of empowerment, coaching, and role clarity on turnover intention appears to be mediated through employees' perceived service quality.

This study is limited to a selection of variables related to employees' turnover intentions. Future research may focus on testing other variables that may be related to employees' turnover intentions.

This study stresses the importance for managers in service organizations to measure employees' perceived service quality. The results show that there are both direct and indirect relationships to employees' turnover intentions. The conclusion is that employees' perceived service quality is an important consideration with respect to employee‐turnover management.

This study has developed and tested a set of hypothesized relationships in the field of service management.

Internal organizational orientation of service quality and its impact on service delivery performance of the employees have received considerable attention from financial management literature. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue by conducting empirical research focusing on the Pakistani Islamic banking industry. It conceptualizes and measures key determinants of internal organizational orientation of service quality from the employees' perspective.

The data were collected from a sample of 150 employees of pure Islamic banks and conventional banks with IBBs (Islamic Banking Branches or windows) across the entire country. The paper uses principal component factor analysis and regression methods.

Statistical results demonstrate that the employee perceptions of organizational service quality orientation mainly depends upon four main predictors: employees' perception about training and development; development and positioning of Islamic banking products/service concept; customer service orientation; and employees' service quality performance. Principal component factor analysis results indicate four predictive internal organizational service quality orientation factors (ISQF) where 16 per cent of the variation is being explained by employee perception of organizational orientation towards employees' training and development (ISQF1), 13 per cent variation explained employee perception of organizational orientation towards development and positioning of Islamic banking products/service concept (ISQF2), 11 per cent variation explained by employee perception of organizational service quality orientation towards customer service orientation (ISQF3), and 10 per cent variation explained employee perception of organizational service quality orientation towards employees' service quality performance (ISQF4).

Management of Islamic Banks in Pakistan need to be mindful about the fact that ISQFs identified by this study have the potential to indirectly influence customer perceptions through effective employees' recruitment and selection criteria, complemented by training to improve service oriented skills and knowledge development about Sh´ria principles related with the products/services offered by Islamic banks in Pakistan.

Studies in the service quality evaluation literature have generally attempted to determine the service quality perception level of customers by mainly focusing on customers’ quality evaluations. However, the nature and characteristics of differences in service quality perceptions among customers, managers and employees are not sufficiently researched. In this study, the differences in service quality perceptions among the aforementioned stakeholders are examined.

Multivariate analysis of variance was used to test the significant differences between stakeholder’s perceptions of service quality, using a sample of 845 hotel stakeholders (customers, employees and managers).

The findings showed that employees perceived service performance to be at a high level, while customers perceived it to be at a low level. According to the post-hoc test, even though managers’ perception of service quality performance was lower than that of employees, no significant difference was found between them. In addition, it was determined by second-order confirmatory factor analysis that the lowest explanation ratio was the tangible dimension in SERVQUAL.

One major shortcoming in the concept of service quality is that stakeholders perceive service quality differently. In particular, a hotel business that lacks service quality may face issues such as negative customer satisfaction, lack of customer loyalty and lower competitive advantage. However, while most of the studies on the hotel sector in the literature focus mainly on the evaluation of customers for service quality, other stakeholders’ (employees’ and managers’) perceptions have been ignored. Therefore, the current study’s contribution to the literature explores the differences in stakeholders’ perceptions of the hotel industry.

This paper examines several sources of support for contact employees in service encounters. These sources of support, including organization support, supervisory support, and customer's participation, are proposed to affect the attitudes and behaviors of employees, and consequently affect customer's perceptions of employees' service quality. This study, which combines perceptions from customers and their contact employees, shows that three sources of support for employees contribute significantly to job satisfaction and employee service quality, while perceived organizational support and customer participation affect service effort. Also, the empirical results indicate that both employee service effort and job satisfaction play strong, central roles in determining customers' perceptions of employee service quality. They were found to be effective mediators linking employees' cognitive appraisal of various sources of support to service quality.

Based on a dyadic perspective, the purpose of this paper is to include the contributions of employee and customer in a service process and to examine the underlying mechanism of customer organization socialization on service performance.

The authors used a unique survey data pertaining to the service industry. The authors collected their data from multiple sources (customers, front-line employees and these employees' managers) in the divisions of a large service organization – Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China. The authors adopted hierarchical regression moderated path analysis approach to examine our moderated mediation model.

The authors find that both the quality of customer service and the quality of employee service play as moderators in the relationship between customer organization socialization and service performance. And quality of customer service moderates the relationship between customer organization socialization and quality of employee service.

The literature has focused primarily on service performance improvement based on the dyadic perspective of customer and employee. The research develops a moderated mediation model and contributes to the literature by empirically examining customer organization socialization.

This study aims to explore the extent to which internal marketing influences employees’ perceived ability to deliver service quality in the Islamic banking industry in Oman. Additionally, the influence of perceived service quality on perceived customer satisfaction is established.

Data was obtained from retail banking branch employees at the customer front line of Islamic banks in Oman using electronic and person-administered surveys, and 272 responses were deemed suitable for data analysis. The measurement and structural models were measured through structural equation modelling.

The findings show that internal promotion, internal process and internal purpose are enablers of employees’ perceived ability to deliver service quality in the Islamic banking industry of Oman. In addition, service quality was found to have a strong positive influence on perceived customer satisfaction in Islamic banks.

This study demonstrates that internal product, internal price, internal promotion, internal process and internal purpose are influencers of service quality, and the latter has a direct relationship with perceived customer satisfaction in Islamic banking.

The findings can guide the Islamic banking sector in Oman on how internal marketing can foster service quality, ultimately leading to positive perceived customer satisfaction experiences.

The internal marketing mix model is predominately a Western model, which has been tested primarily in mature Western markets. This study reflects on ten internal marketing mix elements, which have been tested for the enablement of service quality and perceived customer satisfaction in Oman.

Studies in hospitality and tourism have seldom investigated the role of employee commitment to building customers' attitudinal loyalty. This study examines the impact of employee commitment on customers' attitude-based loyalty. The study contributes to knowledge of how employees' affective attitude (i.e. employee commitment) impacts and mediates the relationships within this model by considering service quality attributes separately in the context of China's Greater Bay Area.

Using a quantitative approach, 664 customers visiting hotels and tourist attractions within three cities of Hong Kong, Macau and Zhuhai were surveyed. A convenience sampling technique was employed to administer questionnaires within these contexts. A structural equation modeling (SEM) using AMOS software was used to test the relationships in the proposed model.

The results suggest that while service quality attributes have a different impact on employee commitment, employee commitment plays a response-predictor-mediator role in the attitudinal loyalty framework. For instance, personal interactions and technical quality are significant predictors of employee commitment. Employee commitment influences customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions. Moreover, employee commitment fully mediates the relationship between technical quality and customer satisfaction and partially mediates the association between personal interaction and customer satisfaction.

Given that employee commitment could be derived from personal interaction with customers, hoteliers and destination management organizations should encourage customers through their websites to be responsive to employees by providing constructive feedback on their service delivery. Management of hotels, attractions and destinations need to motivate employees through incentives such as pay raise, bonuses, time-off and paid holidays.

The paper is inimitable in its attempt to extend the customer attitudinal loyalty debate by including employees' attitude (i.e. commitment) in the measurement of customers' attitudinal loyalty in the hospitality and tourism industry.