Frontline employees’ display of fake smiles and angry faces: When and why they influence service performance
Service firms strive to ensure frontline employees present authentic smiles to customers to enhance service performance. However, inauthentic positive displays, such as fake smiles, and even authentic negative displays, such as anger, remain common in the service environment, posing a need for managers to understand the importance of real smiles and how to manage employees’ unwanted displays of emotions.
Previous studies have examined various factors driving the negative effects of inauthenticity on service performance. These factors mainly consider customer-employee relationships, employee-related factors, and customer-related factors occurring at the moment of service delivery, though a lack of focus has been given on the predelivery phase.
This research addresses this gap by examining how the effects of inauthentic displays on service performance is influenced by customers’ predelivery choice confidence, which refers to their certainty of how optimal and appropriate their choice of service provider was before service delivery. Building upon the emotions as a social information (EASI) theory, the study also investigates customers’ cognitive dissonance and decision regret as the mechanisms through which inauthentic positive displays affect service performance. Moreover, it seeks to understand whether it is better to present a fake smile than an authentic yet negative display, like anger.
Method and sample
This study comprises four studies. Study 1 is a dyadic field study that explored whether frontline employees displaying inauthentic positive emotions received more tips from customers with high choice confidence. A sample of 104 customers completed a survey distributed by eight employees at a café in Southern Germany. Study 2 replicated Study 1, but manipulated choice confidence and display inauthenticity with a 2 x 2 randomised between-subject design to provide causal support for the relationships, on a sample of 127 from the German Clickworker panel. Study 3 tested inauthentic positive displays against authentic negative displays (anger), using a 2 x 2 design on a sample of 151 recruited from a German Clickworker panel. Finally, Study 4 explored the psychological mechanism through which service performance increases when customers with high choice confidence are confronted with employees’ display inauthenticity, using a 2 x 2 design on 160 participants from the UK’s Clickworker panel.
Key findings
- Study 1 found that customers with high choice confidence reacted less adversely to inauthentic positive displays by frontline employees in terms of tipping.
- Study 2 provided further support for Study 1, with customers having high choice confidence exhibiting a weaker negative effect of display inauthenticity. Specifically, in the inauthentic condition, participants were significantly more satisfied when their choice confidence was high.
- Study 3 found that customers were more satisfied when employees displayed inauthentic positive emotions, compared to when they displayed authentic negative emotions. Similar to the previous studies, choice confidence also positively influenced the effect of display inauthenticity on customer satisfaction.
- Study 4 further demonstrated that the interaction of choice confidence and inauthentic displays on service performance was serially mediated by cognitive dissonance and decision regret. Customers with high choice confidence experienced less cognitive dissonance and regret when encountering inauthentic displays from employees.
Recommendations
The results show that authentic positive displays are better or equivalent to inauthentic positive displays and that negative displays are the worst option. Firms are advised to create an environment that encourages authentic positive frontline employee emotions, rather than focusing on preventing fake or negative displays. To do this, a comprehensive set of input, process, and output controls should be invested in. Input controls include employee recruitment and training, for instance, ensuring that employees bring or develop abilities (e.g., emotional intelligence) and motives (e.g., customer orientation) that enable and motivate them to display authentic positive emotions, or educating them about the effects emotion display inauthenticity on their tips. Process controls may include work resources that support employee well-being, such as autonomy, breaks, and coworker support. Finally, an example of output controls is to reward authentic positive displays, like by giving out “Friendliest Employee of the Month” awards.
Moreover, low customer predelivery choice was found to exacerbate the negative effect of inauthentic displays. Besides investing in input, process, and output controls, firms should acquire customer insights to identify drivers of their choice confidence and manage frontline employees accordingly. Tools such as customer journey maps, service experience blueprints, or surveys could be used. Such analysis should also include the postdelivery stage, as metrics such as customer satisfaction and word of mouth can help managers understand customers’ choice confidence in the predelivery stage.
Finally, market shocks such as the global financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic, combined with unemployment prospects, may reduce both employee positive display authenticity and customer choice confidence. Managers should consider these disruptive events in their employee management and make appropriate adjustments. Specifically, managers should support frontline employees’ emotional and economic well-being in times of crisis, for example, by cutting their own salary rather than frontline employees’ during financial shocks. They should also compensate frontline employees for lost tips where feasible to ensure company performance during volatility. Firms that create and maintain conditions for employees to present a sincere smile can increase customer satisfaction and in turn stabilize company revenues.
Researcher
More information
The research article is also available on eprints.