Bending the rules to help customers: Examining the drivers.
Fashion retail organisations often employ service scripts that guide employee’s service delivery, to ensure their service behaviours are consistent and standardised. However, sometimes employees would “bend the rules” to assist their customers. For example, they might offer a refund without proof of purchase, provide free alterations, or warn a customer about a poorly constructed garment. These can be referred to as ‘customer-oriented deviance’ behaviours, which are an employee’s voluntary actions that depart from the organisation’s usual procedures. There are different types of customer-oriented deviance: deviant service adaptation (DSA) refers to deviant behaviours to adapt service processes to benefit customers; deviant service communication (DSC) is when employees deviate from a defined service script or verbally provided information to communicate about the company (DSCC) or the products/services (DSCP).
According to person-situation theory, such behaviours are influenced by self-corrective judgements of the situation, as well as motivations that are either other-directed (pro-social), to genuinely help their customers or the organisation, or self-directed, to avoid an extended argument, speed up the service interaction, or gain recognition, which benefit the employees themselves.
While previous research into this topic has conceptualised and measured the practice and examined its consequences, there is a lack of understanding of their antecedents and moderators. Addressing this gap, this research is the first to examine non-compliance and deviance in a customer service retail setting and the influencing and moderating factors.
Drawing upon person-situation theory, this research proposes a psychometric model through which motivations that are pro-social (employee’s helping behaviour) and self-directed (employee’s job efficiency, attempt to reduce emotional labour, and direct personal benefits) both influence engagements in different types of customer-oriented deviance behaviours, which result in higher levels of commitment to the organisation. It also examines the moderating effect of employee’s length of experience with an organisation (tenure) on these relationships.
Method and sample
Self-completed, anonymous, online surveys were conducted using Qualtrics, which obtained responses from sales associates employed in Australian fashion retail businesses (N=390). Screening questions were used to filter out respondents who did not meet the criteria of a frontline service employee. Short-tenured frontline employees are defined as those with less than 7 years of experience with their organisation (49%), while those with 7 to 40 years of experience are categorised as long-tenured (51%).
Previously validated scales, which were adapted to suit the context, were used to measure the various constructs in the model with a 7-point Likert scale. The data analysis process adopted a Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modeling approach to conduct multi-group analysis with the sample and used various indicators from past research to test the reliability and validity of the model. The research also checked the common-method variance issue using the variance inflation factor and the marker variable technique.
Key findings
- Overall, frontline employees were inclined to adapt service procedures and engage in deviant communication about their organization and/or the products they sell for both pro-social and self-directed motivations. Long-tenured employees indicated lower motivations to engage in customer-oriented deviance, including their helping behaviour, job efficiency, emotional labour, and self-interest motivations, compared to short-term employees.
- Contradictory to the prediction, employees were more inclined to adapt organisational-mandated service scripts and procedures to purely assist their customers, regardless of their tenure. Regarding product communication, long-tenured employees were less likely to deviate from product scripts.
- Both short- and long-tenured employees were more inclined to adapt their customer service practices and their communication about their organisation and products to make their job easier, such as to save time and expedite the service process. Only long-tenured employees were likely to engage in deviant communication about their organisation and products.
- Another unexpected finding was employees tend to stick to scripts and procedures that provide certainty and direction, rather than engage in deviant behaviours, as they are driven to reduce conflict and emotional labour.
- Self-interests such as recognition, acknowledgement, and awards also drive employees’ voluntary departure from service procedures and communication scripts, especially for long-tenured employees who have more experience working in the organisation.
- Employees’ ability to engage in customer-oriented behaviour influence their organisational commitment. Those who engaged in higher levels of deviant communication about the company were also likely to have a lower commitment to their organisation. In contrast, those who breached service scripts about the products they sell tend to have a higher organisational commitment.
Recommendations
Since customer-oriented deviance may conflict with the policies or norms of fashion retailers, inherent risks associated with encouraging such behaviours should be considered, for instance, reduced service consistency which may result in customer dissatisfaction. However, fashion consumers do expect some level of variability in the service experience and hence, customer-oriented deviance can be treated as a customised experience based on each customer’s individual needs. Such behaviour should produce benefits that can overweight the potential drawbacks and provide valuable, positive outcomes for the organisation.
As employees remain more committed to their employer when they feel empowered to alter the way they communicate about the fashion product they sell, fashion retail managers should provide more information and training about their products to employees. Fashion retailers should also reduce employees’ job efficiency motivation, since this drives deviant organisational communication behaviour that leads to lower organisational commitment and higher employee turnover. In particular, managers should set up achievable goals for employees or encourage employees’ suggestions to enhance efficiency. Finally, positive and constructive deviance should be encouraged within fashion retailers due to its proven valuable outcomes, especially for long-tenured employees who tend to have lower motivations to adapt the way they interact with customers.
Researcher
More information
The research article is also available on eprints.