اثرات خلق و خوی فروشنده، رفتار خریداران، و نوع فروشگاه در خدمات مشتری

This paper proposes that salesperson mood, shopper behavior, and store type have significant effects on the level of customer service provided by a store. Results from a laboratory experiment reveal that salespeople enjoy unpleasant shoppers less but serve them more. Salespeople in a good mood are more uniform in their delivery of customer service, while those in a bad mood are more likely to provide poor service to pleasant than to unpleasant customers. The study also reveals that department-store salespeople provide a more uniform level of customer service than discount-store salespeople. Conclusions and management implications are discussed.

Virtually all marketing studies of mood have focused on its effect on the consumer. However, mood affects more than the customers in a shopping transaction, including the service providers in stores—the salespeople. A salesperson in a good mood may provide quite a different level of customer service than one in a bad mood. For example, suppose a store sales associate has just concluded a trying transaction with a shopper who is hostile and attacking. The sales associate is now approached by another shopper—even a pleasant shopper—who seeks some service. How will the salesperson feel about this shopper? How will the salesperson respond to this shopper? Will the hostile shopper have influenced the salesperson's treatment of the pleasant shopper? And will their be differences by store type—i.e., will discount-store salespeople respond differently than their department-store counterparts? These are among the issues addressed by this study. Though salesperson mood is often beyond the retailer's control (Gardner and Vandersteel, 1984), it may dramatically affect responses to shoppers, and can be influenced with the appropriate organizational structure and climate. Salesperson mood may influence their store performance in both shopper-relevant ways (including their attitudes toward shoppers, their willingness to provide any assistance at all, and their willingness to provide extra service); their performance in other store assignments (quality of effort given to stocking, taking inventory, making markdowns, setting displays); and their morale, satisfaction, and thereby longevity with the job. The purpose of this paper is to examine such effects. In particular, it addresses these questions: • What is the influence of salesperson mood on their own experience with shoppers? • What is the influence of salesperson mood on their treatment of shoppers? • Do shoppers have an influence on salesperson mood? and • Does salesperson mood have different effects on customer service in a department store than in a discount store?

As suggested by Gardner (1985), mood has been found in this study to have an important impact during service encounters. Results from this study have both managerial and theoretical implications. We have found mood to have an effect not only in store salespeople's experience with shoppers, but in the way they treat shoppers. Mood appears to affect department-store salespeople differently than discount store ones. And shoppers themselves appear to have a significant effect on salesperson mood. This research found that store salespeople in a good mood will provide better customer service than those in a bad mood. This is an important finding during a time when retail organizations are looking for ways to improve customer service. As firms seek improved customer service it would be important to determine how they can improve the state of well-being experienced by their salespeople and other service providers. In hiring it may be important to find personalities who are more likely to have and to maintain a positive mood state. More theoretical research is needed to determine specific influences on the mood states of salespeople. This research further shows that sales associates in a bad mood give better service when the customer is unpleasant or aggressive. Overall, we found that unpleasant/aggressive shoppers are more likely to get what they want than pleasant/non-assertive shoppers. When considered in combination with the overall finding that salespeople had better experience with pleasant shoppers, we see a significant conflict. If indeed unpleasant shoppers receive better service, complaining shoppers may learn to become unpleasant in order to get what they want. And shoppers uncomfortable with being unpleasant may simply decide to start shopping elsewhere. However, an interaction with an unpleasant shopper provides a bad experience for the sales associate, whose good mood then deteriorates. Although not tested here, it may be that these salespeople will then provide worse service (to pleasant shoppers). This mood cycle is shown in Fig. 8. It is a most unfortunate mood-service cycle, which must be broken. Full-size image (6 K) Fig. 8. Customer service mood cycle. Figure options As difficult as it might be, salespeople must be trained to provide equivalent levels of good service to both non-assertive and assertive shoppers, giving them no reason to become unpleasant just to get what they want. Alternatively, salespeople could be empowered and thus motivated by positive mood to become more prosocial. Thus shopper behavior will not degrade any positive mood of salespeople nor will there be a negative carryover effect on shoppers who the person subsequently serves. Could this possibly be the secret to good service at such high service stores as Nordstrom? Since virtually every customer is treated well, customers expect it and have no reason to be unpleasant, with the entire positive atmosphere of the store being enhanced. Recently one of the authors was able to unobtrusively observe three sales associates in the Nordstrom shoe department shortly after the store opened. For more than 20 min the salespeople were observed to take turns playing the roles serving customers who had different complaints. This was entirely self-motivated behavior, no managers were present. The level of customer service and commitment to emerge from such behavior does not come without organizational direction, training, reinforcement, and culture. Indeed, one of the co-chairman of Nordstrom stated to the authors that Nordstrom treats its salespeople just as it would like its salespeople to treat its customers ( McMillan, 1991, 1993). The telling and retelling of customer service stories at Nordstrom no doubt creates a social expectation for salespeople and likely also creates a mood climate consistent with high levels of service. Such a climate could powerfully influence the customer service mood cycle ( Fig. 8). Stores today are giving greater attention to selecting sales associates who simply like people. Wal Mart, for example, is determined in its recruitment procedures to select store associates who have a positive and caring attitude toward others (Alford, 1992). Much of Wal Mart's training has then been done for them since they begin with associates who are attracted to others and by nature want to provide good customer service. But the above results highlight the value to customer service that can be obtained from personnel who are working in good-mood-promoting circumstances. A good-mood-congruent situation is at least partially under the control of training programs and of store management. For example, suppose store associates were invited to participate in paid weekly sessions in which they role-played customer service situations, along with other store issues. These sessions would likely not only build customer service skills, but improve morale in the organization due to a perception that management cares about the associates. We believe that this is an important issue in customer service and deserves more research. Furthermore, we found that department-store people tend to provide more consistent service to shoppers than discount-store people. Given that this was a simulated experience, and our subjects had no actual sales training in either store, this finding suggests that perceived expectations has much to do with the level of customer service provided. People who were told that they work in an upscale department store seemed to automatically provide a reasonable level of customer service regardless of their own mood. On the other hand, people working in a discount store did not accept this responsibility and were more likely to provide customer service according to their own whim. In practical terms, this suggests that the task of stores of both types is to be clear in their expectations of high service among their salespeople, both through training and through company culture. This could be a key to the high customer service level at Wal Mart. Wal Mart associates seem to know what is expected of them, even in this discount store. Overall, the results of this study are important. To recognize that mood directly influences customer service should have implications for sales associates’ treatment, training, and the development of a company culture. The management task is to provide an environment which fosters feelings of well-being, and which sets high expectations for customer service, regardless of shopper attitudes or behavior. This process is likely to provide the highest overall level of customer service and, since salespeople's overall mood is more positive, customers will have little reason to become unpleasant and destroy it. This retains the positive mood in the store, and the uniform level of customer service can continue. And that is the ultimate conclusion of this study…. that stores must be proactive in developing an organizational climate, morale, and indeed salesperson moods which facilitate a high level of customer service. We understand that these are findings from just one study; however, the results are significant and we hope will encourage more study of the effect of store salesperson well-being on customer service.