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D.S. Sundaram: Assistant Professor of Marketing, Indiana University East, Richmond, Indiana, USA
Cynthia Webster: Professor of Marketing, Mississippi State University, Mississippi, USA
Interaction
The interaction between service employees and customers, commonly referred to as the service encounter, is a critical part of the service delivery process because its elements greatly impact customers' evaluations of service consumption experiences (Soloman et al., 1985). Therefore, it is no surprise that many service managers and researchers have been interested in the dynamics of service encounters, both contemplating and examining how they can enhance our understanding of how customers evaluate service experiences.
Because customers' evaluations of service encounters are based on the nature of their interactions with service employees, service managers need to be cognizant of the importance of continuously striving to improve the quality of the interactions that take place in their business firms. Indeed, leading service organizations (e.g. Marriott Hotel Corp.) spend considerable effort in identifying employee behaviors that generate favorable responses from customers.
Positive influence
It is commonly known that employees' display of affective characteristics, such as friendliness, responsiveness, and enthusiasm, positively influences customers' overall evaluation of service consumption experiences and perceptions of service quality. Further, we are aware that employees' verbal behavior during an encounter (such as words of greeting and courtesy) affect customer perceptions of employee friendliness and consequently enhance the perceived quality of the service interaction (Elizur, 1987). However, what is relatively unclear is the nature of the effect of service employees' actions - particularly their nonverbal behavior - on customers' perceptions of service employees' characteristics (such as their friendliness, competence, and credibility). This lack of clarity is unfortunate because research in the communication field reveals that the nonverbal components are at least as important as the verbal components of interpersonal communication in shaping the outcome of employee-customer interactions (e.g. Barnum and Wolniansky, 1989; Burgoon et al., 1990). In fact, nearly half of the variations in response to interpersonal communication can be attributed to nonverbal factors (Mehrabian, 1981). It is even suggested that nonverbal communication, the form of communicating thoughts and emotions without using words, accounts for nearly 70 percent of all communication (Barnum and Wolniansky, 1989).
Scarcity of research
Service employees' nonverbal behavior remains virtually unexplored despite its importance with respect to the...