Psychometric sifting to efficiently select the right service employees

2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 418-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
John E.G. Bateson ◽  
Jochen Wirtz ◽  
Eugene Burke ◽  
Carly Vaughan
Keyword(s):  
Customer Orientation ◽  
Selection Process ◽  
Traditional Approach ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Operational Efficiency ◽  
Service Firms ◽  
Recruitment Process ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Service Employees ◽  
The Right

Purpose – Service employees in subordinate service roles are crucial for operational efficiency and service quality. However, the stressful nature of these roles, inappropriate hire selection, and the proliferation of job boards have created massive recruitment problems for HR departments. The purpose of this paper is to highlights the growing costs of recruiting the right candidates for service roles while offering an alternative approach to recruitment that is more efficient and effective than the traditional approach. Design/methodology/approach – The study offers empirical evidence of five instances in which the use of psychometric sifting procedures reduced recruitment costs, while improving the quality of the resultant hires. Findings – By standing the traditional recruitment process “on its head” and using psychometric tests at the start of the selection process, the recruitment process can be significantly improved. Such tests efficiently weed out unsuitable candidates before they even enter the recruitment process, leaving a smaller, better-qualified pool for possible recruitment. Practical implications – Firms can safely use the psychometric sifts to select applicants according to their operational efficiency, customer orientation, and overall performance. This paper illustrates the use of both traditional questionnaire measures and situational judgment tests to remove unsuitable applicants at the start of the selection process. A real-life case study suggests that such an approach increases the hiring success rate from 6:1 to 2:1. In the opening of a new supermarket by a UK group, this process saved 73,000 hours of managers’ time, representing $1.8 million savings in opening costs. Originality/value – The paper offers a viable cost-saving alternative to a growing problem for HR departments in service firms and provides directions for further research.

scholarly journals Half human, half machine – augmenting service employees with AI for interpersonal emotion regulation

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander P. Henkel ◽  
Stefano Bromuri ◽  
Deniz Iren ◽  
Visara Urovi
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Goal Attainment ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Service Firms ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Service Employees ◽  
Interpersonal Emotion Regulation ◽  
Recognition Software

PurposeWith the advent of increasingly sophisticated AI, the nature of work in the service frontline is changing. The next frontier is to go beyond replacing routine tasks and augmenting service employees with AI. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether service employees augmented with AI-based emotion recognition software are more effective in interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) and whether and how IER impacts their own affective well-being.Design/methodology/approachFor the underlying study, an AI-based emotion recognition software was developed in order to assist service employees in managing customer emotions. A field study based on 2,459 call center service interactions assessed the effectiveness of the AI in augmenting service employees for IER and the immediate downstream consequences for well-being relevant outcomes.FindingsAugmenting service employees with AI significantly improved their IER activities. Employees in the AI (vs control) condition were significantly more effective in regulating customer emotions. IER goal attainment, in turn, mediated the effect on employee affective well-being. Perceived stress related to exposure to the AI augmentation acted as a competing mediator.Practical implicationsService firms can benefit from state-of-the-art AI technology by focusing on its capacity to augment rather than merely replacing employees. Furthermore, signaling IER goal attainment with the help of technology may provide uplifting consequences for service employee affective well-being.Originality/valueThe present study is among the first to empirically test the introduction of an AI-fueled technology to augment service employees in handling customer emotions. This paper further complements the literature by investigating IER in a real-life setting and by uncovering goal attainment as a new mechanism underlying the effect of IER on the well-being of the sender.

Deriving managerial implications through SERVQUAL gap elasticity in UAE banking

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 940-964 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mukesh Kumar ◽  
K.S. Sujit ◽  
Vincent Charles
Keyword(s):  
United Arab Emirates ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Traditional Approach ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Relative Importance ◽  
Linear Regression Models ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Managerial Implications ◽  
The Right

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose the microeconomics concept of elasticity to estimate the SERVQUAL gap elasticity to derive important insights for service providers to develop the right strategies to bridge the overall gap in service. Design/methodology/approach The dimensions of SERVQUAL adopted from Parasuraman et al. (1988) and Kumar et al. (2009) are first verified for their unidimensionality using structural equation modeling and reliability in the context of United Arab Emirates banking industry. Furthermore, the technique of dominance analysis is used to derive the relative importance of dimensions for different groups of banks. Finally, the stepwise log-linear regression models are used to estimate the gap elasticity to measure the responsiveness of the overall SERVQUAL gap to a change in customers’ perception on different dimension. Findings The results reveal that the dimension which is prioritized as the most important dimension need not to be the one to be targeted under the resource constraint to react faster to the changes of customers’ banking behavior. Originality/value This is probably the first attempt to examine the service quality through gap elasticity. This method is especially useful when the traditional approach to measure relative importance of critical factors fails to clearly discriminate between two or more dimensions, which, in turn, may lead to failure in decision making to choose the right strategies to bridge the overall gap in the service.

Implementation and adoption of CRM and co-creation leveraging collaborative technologies

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-132
Author(s):  
Neeraj Kumar Dubey ◽  
Preeti Sharma ◽  
Purnima Sangle
Keyword(s):  
Customer Orientation ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Customer Relationship ◽  
Case Study Method ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Collaborative Technologies ◽  
Customer Centricity ◽  
The Relationship

Purpose This paper aims to study the role of the emerging technology landscape and collaborative platforms in customer relationship management (CRM) unravelling novel opportunities for mutual co-creation in Indian banking context. Design/methodology/approach This study used the case-study method for collecting various sources for “triangulation”. Findings The advancement of technology has drastically increased avenues of dialogue and access and brought transparency in the relationship, offering opportunities for co-creation and increased dependence on technology in CRM. A longitudinal approach explained how bank leveraged technology in multiple aspects of CRM for enhancing relationship quality and outcome. Research limitations/implications The study is exploratory in nature in Indian banking context, and thus it should be viewed as a preliminary step in contributing to the understanding of CRM in a new collaborative technology landscape. Practical implications This study explains the changing shape of CRM and provides relevance of customer orientation and offers insight about co-creation which has taken centre stage because of the emergence of collaborative technologies. Originality/value This study is possibly one of the first to conduct a case study to understand the way collaborative technological advancements are being exploited by organisations to develop superior CRM capability and achieve co-creation. This study analysed and comprehended the design and implementation of CRM in an Indian bank in real-life settings to gain a better understanding of the adoption of new collaborative technological advancements by a bank for customer centricity and facilitating co-creation.

scholarly journals Customer orientation: the interactive effect of role clarity and learning goal orientation

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-314
Author(s):  
Klaus J. Templer ◽  
Jeffrey C. Kennedy ◽  
Riyang Phang
Keyword(s):  
Goal Orientation ◽  
Customer Orientation ◽  
Interactive Effect ◽  
Selection Criterion ◽  
Role Clarity ◽  
High Learning ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Service Employees ◽  
Learning Goal ◽  
Learning Goal Orientation

PurposeCustomer orientation of service employees relates to customer satisfaction and loyalty, sales growth and business performance. Drawing from conservation of resources (COR) theory, the aim of this study was to test the interactive effects of service employees' role clarity and learning goal orientation on customer orientation. Specifically, it was hypothesized that even under conditions of low role clarity, service employees with high learning goal orientation would maintain a high level of customer orientation.Design/methodology/approachParticipants were 323 employees of 4- and 5-star hotels in Singapore. Using questionnaires, they reported their role clarity, learning goal orientation and customer orientation. For hypothesis testing, moderated regression analysis was performed.FindingsRole clarity and learning goal orientation were significantly related to customer orientation, and in support of the hypothesis, the interaction effect of role clarity and learning goal orientation was also significant. With high role clarity, all employees showed high customer orientation. But with low role clarity, only employees with high learning goal orientation demonstrated high customer orientation.Practical implicationsThe recommendations from this study are to include learning goal orientation as a selection criterion for service employees and to clearly define the roles of existing service employees, especially for those with low learning goal orientation.Originality/valueThe originality and value of this study lies in highlighting the importance of learning goal orientation especially under conditions of low role clarity.

Evaluation of forecasting models for air cargo

2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 635-655 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sirikhorn Klindokmai ◽  
Peter Neech ◽  
Yue Wu ◽  
Udechukwu Ojiako ◽  
Max Chipulu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Real Life ◽  
Air Cargo ◽  
Strategic Development ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Forecasting Models ◽  
Real Life Data ◽  
Accurate Forecast ◽  
Demand Fluctuations ◽  
The Right ◽  
Demand Patterns

Purpose – Virgin Atlantic Cargo is one of the largest air freight operators in the world. As part of a wider strategic development initiative, the company has identified forecasting accuracy as of strategic importance to its operational efficiency. This is because accurate forecast enables the company to have the right resources available at the right place and time. The purpose of this paper is to undertake an evaluation of current month-to-date forecasting utilized by Virgin Atlantic Cargo. The study employed demand patterns drawn from historical data on chargeable weight over a seven-year-period covering six of the company's routes. Design/methodology/approach – A case study is carried out, where a comparison between forecasting models is undertaken using error accuracy measures. Data in the form of historical chargeable weight over a seven-year-period covering six of the company's most profitable routes are employed in the study. For propriety and privacy reasons, data provided by the company have been sanitized. Findings – Preliminary analysis of the time series shows that the air cargo chargeable weight could be difficult to forecast due to demand fluctuations which appear extremely sensitive to external market and economic factors. Originality/value – The study contributes to existing literature on air cargo forecasting and is therefore of interest to scholars examining the problems of overbooking. Overbooking which is employed by air cargo operators to hedge against “no-show” bookings. However, the inability of air cargo operators to accurately predict cargo capacity unlikely to be used implies that operators are unable to establish with an aspect of certainty their revenue streams. The research methodology adopted is also predominantly discursive in that it employs a synthesis of existing forecasting literature and real-life data for accuracy analysis.

Determinants of quality and efficiency performance in service operations

2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jayanth Jayaram ◽  
Kefeng Xu
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
System Performance ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Customer Orientation ◽  
Service System ◽  
Performance Outcomes ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Service Firms ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Internal Knowledge

Purpose – Using arguments from the knowledge-based view and resource-based view of the firm, the purpose of this paper is to propose that external knowledge (as measured by a firm’s customer orientation) and internal knowledge management (through human capital development techniques of job-related training and enhancing employee capability) together contribute to successful service delivery systems. Design/methodology/approach – The hypothesized model is tested on a large sample of 249 Chinese service firms using structural equation modeling and hierarchical regression analyses. Findings – The results indicate that the knowledge management factors of customer orientation, employee capability and job-related training had a varying influence on quality and efficiency dimensions of service system performance. Also, internal knowledge facets of employee capability and job-related training had complementary effects in inducing improved performance on both quality and efficiency. Research limitations/implications – The focus on the key enablers of customer orientation, employee capability and job-related training does not represent a comprehensive set of enablers of service system performance outcomes. Also, a longitudinal examination of capabilities that influence service system performance can also be explored. Originality/value – The context of service firms in multiple sectors serves as an important contribution to the emerging literature that bridges human resource management and customer orientation in service settings. Implications of the results for practice and theory development are discussed.

Human Resource Management in Modern Society

2021 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 25-30
Author(s):  
Petronela Cristina Simion ◽  
Mirona Ana Maria Popescu ◽  
Iustina Cristina Costea-Marcu ◽  
Iuliana Grecu
Keyword(s):  
Human Resources ◽  
Selection Process ◽  
Human Resources Management ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Machine Learning Algorithms ◽  
Recruitment Process ◽  
Healthy Environment ◽  
Search And Selection ◽  
The Right ◽  
High Level

Recruitment is one of the main pillars for the proper functioning of a healthy environment, which meets its objectives and is a process coordinated by the human resources department, together with the respective managers for each position. The recruitment process consists in promoting vacancies using the most appropriate channels, means and tools to maximize the attraction rate of the most suitable candidates, as addressability and accessibility within the target group of potential applicants to meet almost all the conditions. and the criteria set out in the profile of the ideal candidate. There is an acute need for skills in a labor market that demands competitiveness as soon as possible. The most important thing that managers and leaders do in an organization is to hire the right people for the right job. At present, the recruitment process has become very dynamic and is constantly changing. We are currently facing an impressive increase in the use of technology and automation in almost every aspect of the recruitment industry. Undoubtedly, the automation of the recruitment process and the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms in these systems has brought a number of benefits and changed the way candidates are selected. The authors of the article aim to conduct a bibliographic research to illustrate the current state of human resources management and the methods adopted in its optimization. The latest trends in this field are researched and the main challenges that appear are exposed. There are presented the means used to maintain employees within the organizations and increase their productivity. The collected data are interpreted and a model of systematization of the recruitment process is proposed using process modeling, for an easier implementation. In conclusion, it is found that the role of recruiters will change through the adoption on a larger scale of solutions to automate the process of search and selection of candidates. Although the benefits of recruiting automation could outweigh the arguments against it, it is prudent for recruiters to combine technology with the human factor in the selection process of the right candidate. The most important strategic challenge in HR for companies is to maintain a high level of employee involvement, which is difficult to achieve only through technology.

Dilemma in hiring

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (8) ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Seema Bhatt
Keyword(s):  
Manufacturing Sector ◽  
Selection Process ◽  
Resource Planning ◽  
Subject Area ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Manufacturing Organization ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Recruitment And Selection ◽  
The Right ◽  
Management Students

Subject area The recruitment and selection process, human resource planning, talent management and succession planning. Study level/applicability The case has been tried and tested in the classroom setting with management students pursuing a Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management (PGDBM). Case overview The case is set in the southern part of India in a manufacturing organization, Plomsom Ltd (a disguised organisation). Plomsom Ltd manufactures tractors and has a pan-India presence. The sale of tractors in India fluctuates over time. Sales are largely dependent on the seasonal harvests which in turn are heavily dependent on the monsoon rains. The case is designed for understanding the importance and necessity of finding the right man at the right time with the right skills in a manufacturing set up where production output is a factor of many interdependent variables. Expected learning outcomes The learning objectives of the case are: critical analysis of recruitment and selection; importance of job analysis in recruitment and selection; understanding the role of HR planning in running the operations; understanding problems in the manufacturing sector in an Indian context. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available. Consult your librarian for access.

The Complementarity of Frontline Service Employee Creativity and Attention to Detail in Service Delivery

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phyra Sok ◽  
Keo Mony Sok ◽  
Tracey S. Danaher ◽  
Peter J. Danaher
Keyword(s):  
Customer Service ◽  
Service Performance ◽  
Service Firms ◽  
Employee Creativity ◽  
Service Employees ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Right ◽  
Attention To Detail ◽  
Frontline Service

To deliver superior customer service, frontline service employees (FSEs) need to be creative while also being attentive to detail. However, achieving the right balance between these behaviors is difficult; too much focus on one to the detriment of the other can diminish service performance. Using data from two independent studies of microservice and small service firms, we examine the interplay of employee creativity and attention to detail in driving service performance. The results reveal that at high levels of attention to detail, greater creativity will increase service performance and vice versa. In contrast, at low levels of attention to detail, increasing employee creativity enhances service performance up to a point, after which it declines, and vice versa. Thus, increasing creativity when attention to detail is low or enhancing attention to detail when creativity is low is likely to be harmful to firms. Our findings suggest that managers should empower FSEs to be ambidextrous—they need to engage in high levels of both creativity and attention-to-detail behaviors–to enhance service performance. Firms should invest in training to increase FSEs’ ability to engage in these behaviors simultaneously and create an environment that enhances their self-confidence to do so.

Engaging customers with employees in service encounters

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (6) ◽  
pp. 1071-1105
Author(s):  
Haw-Yi Liang ◽  
Chih-Ying Chu ◽  
Jiun-Sheng Chris Lin
Keyword(s):  
Structural Equation ◽  
Customer Orientation ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Service Industries ◽  
Customer Engagement ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Service Firms ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Service Engagement ◽  
Service Interactions

PurposeKeeping both employees and customers highly engaged has become a critical issue for service firms, especially for high-contact and highly customized services. Therefore, it is essential to engage employees and customers during service interactions for better service outcomes. However, past research on employee and customer engagement has primarily focused on brands and organizations. Little research has concentrated on service interactions as the objects of engagement. To fill this research gap, this study aims to clarify and define service engagement behaviors (SEBs), identify various employee and customer SEBs and develop a model to investigate the relationships between these behaviors.Design/methodology/approachA theoretical framework was developed based on social contagion theory and service-dominant (S-D) logic to explore the effects of employee SEBs on customer SEBs through customer perceptions of relational energy and interaction cohesion. Dyadic survey data collected from 293 customer-employee pairs in various high-contact and highly customized service industries were examined through structural equation modeling.FindingsResults show that employee SEBs (service role involvement, customer orientation behavior and customer empowerment behavior) positively influence relational energy and interaction cohesion, which in turn affect customer SEBs (service exploration behavior and service coordination behavior).Originality/valueThis study represents pioneering research to conceptualize SEBs. Different from the extant literature on engagement, SEBs capture the proactive and collaborative engagement behaviors of employees and customers in service interactions. Various employee and customer SEBs were identified and an empirical model was proposed and tested to investigate the effect of employee SEBs on customer SEBs through relational energy and interaction cohesion.

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