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Don’t just fix it, make it better! Using frontline service employees to improve recovery performance

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Abstract

This study examines how frontline service employees (FSEs) can learn from recovery services and improve their performance accordingly. While research recognizes that FSEs can fulfill an innovation role by sourcing customer knowledge and developing ideas for performance improvement, it remains unclear whether such a role benefits or impairs the FSE’s primary recovery service role of providing efficient and thorough solutions to customer problems. This research models both FSE roles and explores under which conditions it is beneficial for FSEs to engage in an additional innovation role. The model is tested using survey and objective data from 134 FSEs. PLS results reveal that the innovation role is detrimental because sourcing knowledge from customers takes time and effort, but also beneficial because knowledge sourcing triggers FSEs to develop ideas for improvement, which positively influence their recovery speed and recovery quality. Managers can strengthen these positive effects of knowledge sourcing by optimizing an FSE’s service portfolio (i.e., the combination of products, customers, and failures an employee is responsible for), which leverages the effects of knowledge sourcing on ideas for improvement.

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Notes

  1. Although the term service recovery is typical in literature referring to a service breakdown (e.g., De Matos et al. 2007; Maxham and Netemeyer 2002; Smith et al. 1999), few studies consider after-sales services for product repair. One notable exception is Brady et al. (2008), who consider failures of cellular phones and televisions. We use the term recovery service to denote the act of providing a recovery, including that for products.

  2. We included direct paths from innovation orientation (de Jong et al. 2003) and learning orientation (Sujan et al. 1994) to ideas for improvement. Prior literature argues that innovation- and learning-oriented workers are more inclined to look for improvement, due to their disposition to leverage new and existing knowledge (Scott and Bruce 1994). Age, job experience, and organizational tenure were modeled as controls for ideas for improvement as well as the performance outcomes. Experience and tenure refer to seniority, which may enhance idea development and performance because senior employees have more elaborate knowledge about the firm’s procedures and processes and therefore more easily spot inefficiency. Increasing age, instead, is generally associated with a loss of innovativeness and degeneration of employee capabilities (e.g., Fu 2009). This may negatively impact ideas for improvement and recovery performance. Job autonomy and self-efficacy were also modeled as controls for ideas for improvement and the performance outcomes. Prior research has found that increased autonomy provides employees with more opportunities to be creative (George 2007). Moreover, it increases employee adaptability to customer needs, but may also lead to unnecessary variability which slows service delivery (Marinova et al. 2008). Finally, higher levels of self-efficacy may increase employees’ confidence that idea development will lead to performance gains (i.e., it may be an antecedent to ideas for improvement). It may also impact performance outcomes directly because self-confident employees are more focused and make fewer mistakes (Bandura and Locke 2003).

  3. While PLS is particularly suited for assessing complex models like ours, we also estimated the main model with covariance-based structural equation modeling to prove the robustness of our model. We used AMOS, which led to identical findings in terms of the (in)significance of parameter estimates and their signs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences, Innovation Technology Entrepreneurship & Marketing group, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Gielis A. H. van der Heijden, Jeroen J. L. Schepers & Edwin J. Nijssen

  2. Department of Marketing, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy

    Andrea Ordanini

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  1. Gielis A. H. van der Heijden
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  2. Jeroen J. L. Schepers
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  3. Edwin J. Nijssen
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Correspondence to Gielis A. H. van der Heijden.

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The authors express their appreciation to the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

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van der Heijden, G.A.H., Schepers, J.J.L., Nijssen, E.J. et al. Don’t just fix it, make it better! Using frontline service employees to improve recovery performance. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 41, 515–530 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-012-0324-3

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