Service Sabotage
INTRODUCTION
The relationship between frontline service employees and customers has always been interesting research topic for service marketers as the customer-contact service employee is the service and organization in the customers’ eyes and consumer interpretations of employee performance will create their impression of the service brand (Zeithaml and Bitner, 2009). Most early work on service frontline employees is based on the assumption that interaction between service encounters and customers is harmonious and productive, where service provider tries its best to satisfy customer’s needs and expectations and where service failure is generally described as service performance that fails below a customer’s expectations for all kinds of reasons – the service may be unavailable when promised, it may be delivered late or too slowly, the outcome may be incorrect or poorly executed, or employees may be rude or uncaring (Zeithaml and Bitner, 2009).
But there also exist another reason for service failure - employees who can sabotage the service brand through their performance at the front line (Wallace and de Chernatony, 2009). Contact employees who willingly perform badly and actively work against the brand. The misbehavior which deliberately causes a poor service experience for a customer is often called as “deviant”, and the employee is labeled as a “service saboteur” (Patterson and Baron, 2010). Ind (2004) describes the brand saboteur as any individual who works against the brand idea and Harris and Ogbonna (2002) view service sabotage as employees’ conscious actions that are designed to affect negatively customer service. Research works on sabotage topic estimate that up to 75 percent (Harper 1990), 85 percent (Harris and Ogbonna 2002), and even 96 percent (Slora 1991) of employees regularly behave in a way that can be described as either intentionally dysfunctional or deliberately deviant.
This paper aims to describe different approaches, perspectives,
The relationship between frontline service employees and customers has always been interesting research topic for service marketers as the customer-contact service employee is the service and organization in the customers’ eyes and consumer interpretations of employee performance will create their impression of the service brand (Zeithaml and Bitner, 2009). Most early work on service frontline employees is based on the assumption that interaction between service encounters and customers is harmonious and productive, where service provider tries its best to satisfy customer’s needs and expectations and where service failure is generally described as service performance that fails below a customer’s expectations for all kinds of reasons – the service may be unavailable when promised, it may be delivered late or too slowly, the outcome may be incorrect or poorly executed, or employees may be rude or uncaring (Zeithaml and Bitner, 2009).
But there also exist another reason for service failure - employees who can sabotage the service brand through their performance at the front line (Wallace and de Chernatony, 2009). Contact employees who willingly perform badly and actively work against the brand. The misbehavior which deliberately causes a poor service experience for a customer is often called as “deviant”, and the employee is labeled as a “service saboteur” (Patterson and Baron, 2010). Ind (2004) describes the brand saboteur as any individual who works against the brand idea and Harris and Ogbonna (2002) view service sabotage as employees’ conscious actions that are designed to affect negatively customer service. Research works on sabotage topic estimate that up to 75 percent (Harper 1990), 85 percent (Harris and Ogbonna 2002), and even 96 percent (Slora 1991) of employees regularly behave in a way that can be described as either intentionally dysfunctional or deliberately deviant.
This paper aims to describe different approaches, perspectives,
Bibliography: Ackroyd, S. & Thompson, P. (1999). Organizational Misbehavior. London, Sage. Harris, L.C. & Ogbonna, E. (2006). Service Sabotage: A Study of Antecedents and Consequences. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Volume 34, No. 4, pages 543-558. Harris, L.C. & Ogbonna, E. (2002). Exploring Service Sabotage: The Antecedents, Types, and Consequences of Frontline, Deviant, Antiservice Behaviors. Journal of Service Research 4 (3), pages 163-183. Wallace, E. & de Chernatony, L. (2009). Exploring brand sabotage in retail banking. Journal of Product & Brand Management, Volume 18, Number 3, 2009, pages 198-211 Zeithaml, V.A., & Bitner, M.J (2009)