Face Forward: How Employees' Digital Presence on Service Websites Affects Customer Perceptions of Website and Employee Service Quality.

Confronted with increasing digitalization, service firms are challenged to sustain customer loyalty. A promising means to do so is to leverage the digital presence of service employees on their website. A large-scale field study and several experimental studies show that the digital presence of service employees on the firm website increases current website service quality perceptions and positively shapes memories related to employee service quality perceptions from past service encounters. Both effects indirectly increase customer loyalty and, in turn, financial performance, and are amplified by employee accessibility and a service firm's customer orientation. The authors examine further boundary conditions for the memory process: only service employees evoke the beneficial spillover effect to employee service quality perceptions, and the spillover effect does not generalize to evaluations of product quality. Remarkably, an employee's digital presence, although factually unrelated, augments customer perceptions of service employees' competence and commitment and thus strengthens rather than erodes service employees' role in customer–firm relationships. Theoretical and managerial implications deepen the understanding of how to add a human touch to digital channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Copyright of Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) is the property of American Marketing Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)