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

Abstract

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.

The digital marketing capabilities gap

“…Such a narrow understanding neglects that employees may also play a pivotal role of in digital interactions. For example, Herhausen, Emrich, Grewal, Kipfelsberger, and Schoegel (2020) provide evidence of the positive effects of employees' digital presence on customer loyalty, and Singh, Marinova, and Singh (2020) shed light on salespersons' influence tactics in digital negotiations. Moreover, there is the belief that the salesperson's tacit knowledge is pivotal to successful relationship management.…”

Buy domestic or foreign brands? The moderating roles of decision focus and product quality

“…It is affected by many factors (Curry and Faulds, 1986), and as a result, there is no consensus between using a single dimension (overall quality) or multiple dimensions for measurement (Hjorth-Andersen, 1984). Scholars have also introduced the concept of perceived quality, which is a subjective measurement of product quality that is associated with personal feelings or environmental factors (Herhausen et al. , 2020).…”

Fields of Gold: Scraping Web Data for Marketing Insights

“…Yet, by doing so, researchers could explore many core marketing constructs (e.g., service orientation, sustainability). For example, researchers could systematically collect information available on the websites of many firms to analyze which organizational factors influence how firms signal their service orientation (e.g., employees’ digital presence; Herhausen et al 2020) or environmental credentials (e.g., the B Corporations certification; Gehman and Grimes 2017) to customers and other stakeholders.…”