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Examines the hypothesis that the UK population has not yet fully developed a telemarketing culture and that there is, therefore, a particular need for telemarketers to understand how rapport might be developed on the telephone. Relevant literature from the fields of social psychology, applied psychology and marketing are reviewed and a programme of research was carried out, comprising an Omnibus to measure the extent of telemarketing experience in the UK population and a study among organisations with in‐house telemarketing facilities to explore the types of practices that might foster rapport. It concludes that a telemarketing culture still has some way to develop and that, while many organisations used a number of seemingly relevant techniques, in particular NLP mirroring and matching, there are a number of issues still to be resolved regarding measurement of rapport as well as the theory and “measuring instruments” associated with NLP. Other factors affecting the development of rapport in a telemarketing environment are also considered

The purpose of this paper is to explore the mediation impacts of core, relational and tangible service-quality features on the relationship between customer–frontline employee rapport and customer dependency in an emerging market context. The study examines the moderating effects of relationship age and frequency of customers’ physical visits.

Partial least squares-based structural equation modelling was used to analyse data from a survey of 290 financial services customers in Dhaka, Bangladesh using the convenience sampling technique.

Results show that relational service-quality features had the largest mediation impact on the rapport–dependency relationship, followed by core and tangible service-quality features. Relationship age was not found to be a significant moderator for any relationship. However, the moderation effect of the frequency of customers’ physical visits to the service premises was significant, but only for the link between relational service-quality features and customer dependency and not for the other two types of service-quality features.

Data collected from several other emerging markets would provide more rigorous findings: this is recommended as an avenue for further research.

Practitioners can manipulate specific relational or tangible service-quality features to increase customer dependency on their firms, thus ensuring longer-term customer retention.

This study is the first one to examine the relative significance of the impacts of relational features vs tangible features of services on customer dependency in the emerging market context, with rapport serving as an antecedent.

The purpose of this paper is to report antecedent roles of competence, contractual and goodwill trust on rapport and satisfaction in banking services in a developing country context. The study also identifies the mediating influence of these three types of trust between rapport and customer satisfaction.

Data collected from a sample of 212 bank customers were analysed using AMOS-based structural equation modelling.

While all three types of trust have significant impact on satisfaction, only competence and goodwill trust positively influenced rapport. Results also demonstrate that competence and goodwill trust had complementary mediation impacts in the rapport-satisfaction context; however, mediation influence of contractual trust was not significant. Finally, influence of rapport was found to be positive towards satisfaction.

Management should focus on building goodwill and competence trust with bank customers. Bank managers should hire and train employees who are friendly in terms of customer care and are able to develop rapport with customers to increase the latter's satisfaction.

The paper tested the influence of competence, contractual and goodwill trust on rapport and satisfaction and verified the mediation impact of trust between rapport and satisfaction.

This chapter attempts to capture what teaching excellence looks and feels like for students. Our research reports on research conducted by two student authors at separate institutions. It suggests that the most crucial aspect of the student experience of ‘teaching excellence’ is a teacher's ability to build rapport and create meaningful interpersonal relationships with their students. Leanne Hunt's research was conducted with her fellow students at the University of Bradford. She outlines how, for her participants, the student–teacher rapport informed a positive learning experience which translated into a mutual understanding of excellent teaching. Widening participation, college-based HE student Hollie Shaw, now at Sheffield Hallam University, defines teaching excellence as flexible enough to respond to student learning needs, but strong enough to inspire interest in the discipline. In this chapter, we consider their separate testimonies carefully: we argue that exploring unconscious bias furthers understanding of how differences between student and teacher may compromise interpersonal relations and so student recognition of a tutor's positive and crucial role in the student experience and the implications of how one might measure this given the emphasis on proxies for teaching excellence in the TEF. We suggest breaking down unconscious bias calls for embracing differences, reflection and recognising the complexities of contemporary staff and student university lives. This chapter's exploration of staff–student partnership opens up potential for the creation of more equitable and honest learning dynamics in higher education – where a nuanced understanding of ‘teaching excellence’ can be defined, understood and evidenced within a HEI, with external bodies such as the Office for Students, and included in the Teaching Excellence Framework.

This study draws on the author's experiences building rapport through online chat for data collection for the author's doctoral dissertation. The author contacted ten Korean women via online chat to recruit and faced the most challenging situation; building rapport. As the Millennial generation is known as being tech-savvy or digital natives, the author actively used emoticons (pictorial representations of facial expressions using characters) with potential interviewees and completed ten interviews. Therefore, this paper offers a new qualitative interviewing method in feminist research.

The paper briefly reviews the works of literature on interviewing women on sensitive topics and building rapport before the interview. Then, the author introduced using emoticons to create rapport during the data collection process and how a non-traditional approach positively impacts the interviewer and interviewee before, during and even after the interview.

Women participants' responses and behaviors differed after building a rapport through an online chat. They were willing to share their personal stories and memories with the interviewer even though the interviewer did not ask.

This study provides a stepping stone for developing an account of the new qualitative methodological approach, specifically feminist qualitative research.

Few studies have described how qualitative researchers create a rapport in virtual space, specifically using emoticons. Also, this study suggests a new methodological approach since nonverbal communication in online chat is inevitable when interviewing people in qualitative research.

This paper aims to show that whether new customers respond well or poorly to small talk at the beginning of a service encounter depends on their relationship orientation, i.e. how exchange or communally oriented they are. The authors provide service providers with tactics to identify first-time customers’ relationship orientation or set customers’ small talk expectations and thus help them use small talk more effectively.

The authors examine the effect of small talk and relationship orientation on customer intentions to use a service provider in three experiments and one cross-sectional survey. The scenario-based experiments show causality and the effect in online and in-person scenarios. The survey replicates the effect among current customers of a small business.

Communally oriented customers respond positively to small talk, but exchange-oriented customers respond negatively to it. Mediation analyses reveal this occurs because small talk differentially leads to initial feelings of rapport and impatience for people high (versus low) in relationship orientation.

Service providers should consider customers’ relationship orientation before starting a conversation with small talk. The authors find providers can identify exchange-oriented customers by their choice of meeting format (in-person v. video chat). Managers can also use marketing materials to attract customers with a specific relationship orientation or to set customer expectations for small talk in the interaction.

Prior research has largely shown benefits to small talk, but the authors show significant downsides for some customers and to the best of the authors’ knowledge are the first to show process evidence of why these drawbacks occur.

Drawing on social penetration theory (SPT) and social exchange theory, this study examines whether and why customer empathy for frontline employees (FLEs) and employee self-disclosure influence customer citizenship behavior (CCB).

This study’s hypotheses were tested using two studies (study 1 had an experimental design, and study 2 had a survey design) with restaurant customers.

The results indicate that when customers have a higher level of customer empathy for FLE, the likelihood that customers will exhibit CCB increases. Employee self-disclosure provides a greater advantage in fostering CCB. A mediating effect of rapport in the relationship between customer empathy for FLE, employee self-disclosure and CCB is also found, while no interaction effect of customer empathy for FLE and employee self-disclosure on CCB is supported.

Maintaining a focus on the interpersonal nature of interactions between customers and employees in co-creating values, this research advances the CCB literature by newly identifying customer empathy for FLEs and employee self-disclosure as predictors of CCB that have not yet been tapped. The underlying mechanism via rapport is also explained using the value co-creation perspective.

The study investigates different roles (antecedent, mediator and moderator roles) of customer involvement in rapport and satisfaction. It is also designed to reveal the comparative impact of three types of relational benefits (confidential, social and special treatment benefits) on customer involvement.

Structural equation modeling (using Amos) is used for analyzing the data, collected from a survey of 212 sample respondents of the private commercial banking sector.

Results suggest that customer involvement does have antecedent and mediated influence on rapport-satisfaction link while the moderation impact of customer involvement is not supported. In contrast, social treatment benefit is found as the most important relational benefit for developing customer involvement in Bangladesh followed by confidence and special treatment benefit.

Findings will assist bank management to set effective future strategies and to manage successful relationships with customers in order to motivate customer satisfaction with the bank. But the study may suffer from lack of generalization and poor sample representation as it focuses on a single country (Bangladesh) and a single industry (banking sector).

The paper for the first time attempts to reveal antecedent, mediator and moderator role of customer involvement in rapport and satisfaction. It also identifies the level of importance among three relational benefits for Bangladeshi bank customers.