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This study examines how professional service firms' communication effectiveness (affiliative communications style, social dialogue and information provision), social cognitive capital and rapport established between an auditor and SME client are instrumental in influencing the latter's evaluation of the technical quality of an audit.

The study combines qualitative and quantitative methodologies to create a cross-sectional survey covering four geographic regions in an emerging economy – Thailand. The authors examine the hypotheses by employing social interaction theory.

A study of 744 SME executives plus post-survey interviews with three audit partners revealed that an affiliative communications style and information provision are positively associated with the rapport developed between financial auditor and client, and that rapport, in turn, had a strong association with client perceptions of audit quality. In addition, affiliative communication style, information provision and social cognitive capital had a direct (positive) association with perceptions of audit quality. The effects of communication effectiveness and social cognitive capital varied, depending on whether or not the SME client possessed formal accounting qualifications.

The study contributes to the literature on the business-to-business professional services, and accounting in particular, by explicating the important roles of communication effectiveness, rapport, and social cognitive capital in the relationship between an auditor and a client. Moreover, the paper reveals that the differences in educational background of clients result in differential impacts of communication effectiveness and social cognitive capital on rapport and perceptions of audit quality.

This study aims to examine the extent to which switching costs moderates the impact of trust, value and attractiveness of alternatives on client repatronage intentions.

The study combines qualitative and quantitative methodologies to create a cross-sectional survey covering four geographic regions in Thailand. Adopting a contingency perspective, the authors examine the moderating impact of two switching costs (economic and security) on the association among trust, value, attractiveness of alternatives and repatronage intentions.

A study of 519 small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) clients of audit firms confirms the main effects of trust, value and alternative attractiveness on client retention; some but not all linkages are moderated by the costs of switching.

This article focuses on one specific segment (SMEs) and one category of professional services. It would be worthwhile to extend the findings to larger firms and other professional services.

The study contributes to the understanding of relationship continuance among professional services clients by shifting the focus to when and in which contingency conditions trust, value and attractiveness of alternatives have greater or lesser impacts on repatronage intentions.

The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the personal/situational and business factors that encourage or discourage pro bono service of professionals based on the theory of institutional logics framework and the extended purchase behavior model.

This paper collected the data using a mixed-method approach: 30 qualitative interviews and 443 cross-sectional surveys from professional service providers across industries. The constructs of interest were measured with the scales compiled from the literature, industry reports and the preliminary interviews.

The results highlight emotional value derived from personal/situational factors (intrinsic motivation, personal recognition, philanthropic disposition and lack of appreciation) drove professionals’ intentions to continue to undertake pro bono work. While employer encouragement motivated professionals to engage in pro bono service, the prospect of gaining business opportunities and time constraints discouraged this important practice.

While there has been considerable empirical study undertaken on charitable behavior, little attention has been given to this form of giving (pro bono work by service professionals). Overall, the results show that personal satisfaction with and feeling good about the study undertaken are required for continuation. Professionals who are intrinsically motivated, philanthropic-natured and properly-acknowledged through positive feedback and recognition tend to experience positive feelings that engender their good intentions to help the underprivileged, those in need and society more generally. The findings thus complement and extend the academic and industry literature on charitable giving.

This research identifies the drivers of service professionals’ continuation of pro bono work that the third sector relies heavily on its sustainability. As the study findings suggesting the importance of personal recognition, nonprofit organizations should demonstrate genuine gratitude and recognition of these professionals so that they continue to give their services pro bono.

The research is the first empirical study to develop a conceptual model that delineates the drivers and/or barriers to professionals continuing pro bono service. Unlike the previous study lacking a theoretical basis, this paper proposed and tested the conceptual model derived from the institutional logics framework and the extended purchase behavior model.

This study examines how three psychological factors (i.e. perceived experience quality, perceived similarity and client participation) that impact client evaluations of their recent audit experiences influence client satisfaction and trustworthiness, which, in turn, affect advocacy in an small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) context. Furthermore, the study investigates whether the influence of the three psychological factors on client satisfaction and trustworthiness is contingent on client expertise.

The sample consisted of 744 SME executives from the following four regions: central, northern, eastern and southern Thailand. Data were collected using a survey questionnaire. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to ensure the reliability and validity of the scale before structural equation modeling was applied to analyze the data.

The results showed significant positive effects of the three psychological factors (perceived experience quality, perceived similarity and client participation) on client satisfaction and perceived trustworthiness. The moderating role of client expertise on the relationships is also found. More specifically, client expertise positively moderated the connections between experience quality and satisfaction, experience quality and trustworthiness and client participation and trustworthiness. Conversely, client expertise negatively moderated the similarity–satisfaction and similarity–trustworthiness relationships.

This study contributes to the audit literature by examining the role of psychological factor that impacts client satisfaction and perceived trustworthiness in the SME context. Moreover, the moderating role of client expertise is examined for the first time, providing new insights into the boundary condition of the relationship.

The inherent characteristics of professional services (i.e. high in credence properties, customized and featuring information asymmetry) often cause difficulties for clients to confidently evaluate technical outcomes before, during or even after service delivery. This results in considerable client psychological discomfort. This study aims to blend a revised social interaction model and uncertainty reduction theory to investigate the role that service provider’s interpersonal communication style plays in establishing client psychological comfort and satisfaction in a health-care context.

The study draws on cross-sectional data collected from 355 hospital patients following visiting a physician plus an experimental design in an Eastern culture (Thailand).

The study reveals three key findings. First, an affiliative communication style is positively associated with psychological comfort, but not so a dominant communications style. When both styles are presented, the high-affiliative style overshadows the low-dominant style and creates the highest psychological comfort. Second, clients’ perceptions of professional’s affiliative and dominant styles influence psychological comfort differentially under varying conditions of clients’ cognitive social capital, collectivist value-orientation but not service criticality. Third, a competing model suggests psychological comfort acts as a partial mediator between affiliative communication style and satisfaction.

To generalize the findings, further studies might be conducted in other professional services and in individualist Western cultures.

The findings have important managerial implications for the appropriate use of communication style to build psychological comfort and engage clients of professional services firms.

The findings shed light on the important role of an everyday social function – interpersonal communications and how this impacts client psychological comfort and satisfaction.

This is one of the few studies in a services context that examines the impact of professionals’ communications style. Moreover, it examines the impact of cultural value-orientation, cognitive social capital, service criticality in moderating the communications style – client psychological comfort relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the motivation for the 1999 paper “The impact of communication effectiveness and service quality on relationship commitment in consumer, professional services”. In doing so, it is argued that today, the importance and relevance of effective interpersonal communications to managing client relationship have never been greater. Further, this paper updates developments in this area, and importantly, offers directions for future research.

This paper reflects on the motivation and rationale of the original paper and brings to bear relevant developments in the services marketing literature in the past 15-20 years.

As the professional services sector continues to grow in all economies, the credence properties and asymmetrical nature of information flow between provider and client means that the pivotal role of effective interpersonal communications in developing and nurturing client relations continues to grow in importance. Subsequent research has examined communications style; the impact of communications in a business-to-business professional services context and linked it to client psychological comfort, co-production and value co-creation, client engagement, client experience management and empowerment.

For professional service practitioners, the findings serve as a reminder that clients, especially first-time clients, have difficulty in evaluating the outcome quality and value-for-fee paid even after purchase and consumption of the service. Hence, it serves as a reminder that interpersonal communication has a pivotal role to play in influencing client perceptions of both outcome (“what” was produced) and process quality (“how” it was produced), that is their total experience.

The original paper was cited numerous times and generated broader thinking on the role of effective interpersonal communications in a number of areas of services marketing.

In today’s global marketplace, the mantra of many service firms is enhanced efficiency and productivity. To increase their bottom line, firms must also expand revenue. They thus face the challenge of ways to increase revenue through customer satisfaction while also achieving productivity gains. The current study aims to offer insight into the role of various resources that encourage frontline employees (FLEs) to become engaged in the pursuit of achieving organisational goals, ultimately enhancing service productivity and customer satisfaction.

A total of 252 customer-FLE dyadic data were collected at a medium-sized retail bank in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Results show that personal (self-efficacy) and organisational resources impact FLE productivity directly and indirectly through employee engagement. Importantly, service productivity is then positively associated with customer satisfaction.

Extending previous investigations based on the job demands-resources model and theories of self-efficacy and conservation of resources, this study’s findings empirically support anecdotal accounts of the positive productivity–customer satisfaction relationship.

The results also highlight the importance of the management of human and organisational resources to attain this two-pronged goal.

Using dyadic data (customers and FLEs) collected at a medium-sized retail bank, the authors refute the trade-off effect between attaining employee productivity and customer satisfaction in the service industry. This paper further fills research need to study how various resources available to FLEs can achieve desirable organisational outcomes in service firms – the improvement of both service productivity and customer satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of a loss of face on the psychological well-being of frontline employees (FLEs) in an Eastern cultural context (Thailand) when subjected to customer aggression. Importantly, it adopts a contingency approach and examines moderating effects by which social status, a “customer is always right” organisational philosophy and a public/private context impact the nature of the association between customer aggression and loss of face. Finally, it examines the moderating effect of regulation of emotion on the association between loss of face on psychological well-being.

A survey, administered to 319 FLEs in retail stores in Thailand, asked them to recall a recent experience dealing with customer aggression. The data were analysed using structural equation modelling and a moderator regression.

Customer aggression expressions are associated with FLEs’ loss of face, which in turn affects FLEs’ emotional exhaustion and anxiety. FLEs social status and a “customer is always right” organisational philosophy moderate the association between customer aggression and loss of face, and FLEs’ loss of face is greater when their physical well-being is threatened publicly rather than in private. In addition, regulation of emotion was found to increase the negative impact of loss of face on emotional exhaustion.

The way FLEs respond to customer aggression during service encounters, as well as the FLEs’ status and the context, can intensify their loss of face and psychological well-being. This has implications for the extent to which organisations impose a “customer is always right” dictum on FLE, as well as the need for counselling and peer support immediately following customer aggression incidents.

This study is the first to investigate the moderating effects of social status, a “customer is always right” philosophy and public/private context on the expression of customer aggression and FLEs’ accompanying loss of face. In other words, rather than simply examining what causes face loss, the authors shift the focus from the “Is” question to “When” – i.e., under what contingency condition is there more or less face loss?

This study aims to examine the extent to which clients’ perceptions of a financial auditor’s communication style affect their psychological comfort and trust when considering whether to retain the incumbent firm for future financial audits.

A multistage method was used comprising integrated results from a literature review and findings from five in-depth interviews with chief financial officers of listed firms. A cross-sectional survey then yielded valid responses from 190 incorporated firms listed on The Stock Exchange of Thailand or Market for Alternative Investment.

The results reveal that, consistent with social interaction theory, an affiliation communication style positively influenced client’s psychological comfort and trust in an auditor. On the other hand, a dominant communications style negatively impacted psychological comfort. Cognitive social capital was found to moderate the links between dominant communication–psychological comfort, psychological comfort–trust and trust–relationship commitment.

From a managerial perspective, an affiliation communication style is fundamental for building client comfort and trust, especially for professional service firms, but especially in Eastern collectivist cultures that are relationship rich, where people seek to avoid conflict and prefer indirect communication styles over more direct styles.

This research highlights the central role that interpersonal communication style plays in developing psychological comfort and trust with a professional service firm. In addition, this study introduces the role of client psychological comfort as a key mediator between communications and trust.