Service provider type as a predictor of the relationship between sociality and customer satisfaction.

This study examined the relationship between service providers' sociality usage and customer satisfaction with the service provider. The Service Provider Sociality Scale (SPSS) was administered to 250 undergraduate students enrolled in a small, mid-western college and 194 residents from locales near the college. Whether it was a professional (doctor, hairdresser) or nonprofessional (convenience store clerk, fast-food employee) service provider, regression analyses revealed that "courteous expressions" and "personal connection" socialities were positive for both occupational groups; however, a stronger relationship existed for professional service providers. Nevertheless, regardless of service provider occupational type, courteous expressions explained significantly more unique variance in customer satisfaction than did personal connection socialities. Therefore, the communicative actions of service providers may influence customer perceptions of commitment and affect economic prosperity across service entities.

Keywords: service provider; customer; sociality; communication; customer satisfaction

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Building relationships with customers is an important part of conducting business and, arguably, the existence of most businesses depends on establishing sound relationships with their clientele (Bitner, Booms, & Tetreault, 1990; Gremler & Gwinner, 2000). In many service occupations, providers are required to exhibit favorable behaviors such as friendliness and warmth (Tsai & Huang, 2002). For some service providers, customer satisfaction determines employee compensation. At KFC, for example, "about 35 percent of a manager's annual bonus is tied to the customer satisfaction scores they achieve" (Sivadas & Prewitt-Baker, 2000, p. 73). Therefore, regardless of the motives (sincere effort to meet customer needs, economic incentives, etc.), one could ascertain that the communicative interplay between providers and customers plays a significant role in fostering relational development. Indeed, as Ford (2001) suggested, "From health care to auto repair to banking, to clerical support, service interactions have become a significant part of our daily routines and the nature of these interactions may dramatically impact our overall quality of life" (p. 1).

Given that service interactions play a significant role in our lives, limited research has examined the social aspects of service interactions (Ford, 2001). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine service providers' sociality, based on different occupational types, and its relationship to customer satisfaction.

Sociality and Satisfaction in Service Interactions

Pacanowsky and O'Donnell-Trujillo (1983) defined sociality as "performance that encourages a cooperative, social smoothness, void of intense interactions with others" (pp. 139-140). Courtesies, pleasantries, sociabilities, and privacies are respective dimensions of sociality. Courtesies consist of greeting, promoting politeness, or displaying friendliness. Pleasantries include small talk on subjects related to weather, sports, or politics. Sociabilities entail disclosures that lack serious conversational implications, such as those related to sharing gossip and joking. Privacies are more intimate revelations about oneself to others (Pacanowsky & O'Donnell-Trujillo, 1983).

Socialities range from surface-level communications such as greetings and small talk to deeper levels of more intimate disclosures. Socialities differ from other constructs, including immediacy and interaction involvement (Koermer, Ford, Toale, & Dohanos, 2003). Immediacy entails both verbal (e.g., pronoun choice of we vs. you) and nonverbal behavior (e.g., smiling, direct eye contact) used to reduce psychological distance between individuals (Mehrabian, 1967). In the communication field, immediacy has been primarily regarded as a nonverbal construct (for a summation of this work, see Richmond, McCroskey, & Johnson, 2003). Interaction involvement concerns the extent to which a person is cognitively and behaviorally involved in conversation (Cegala, 1981). This construct relies on listening behaviors associated with perceptiveness, attentiveness, and responsiveness. Therefore, sociality focuses on the range of social interactions between individuals, which is not the primary objective found in the immediacy and interaction involvement constructs.

Researchers have minimally examined socialities in service contexts. Williams and Spiro (1985), for instance, studied salespersons' "interaction orientation" to assess if the providers were friendly. Hester, Koger, and McCauley (1985) examined retail store clerks' greetings, including nonverbal communication related to facial regard and overall tone, while interacting with patrons. Also, scholars have studied grocery store and convenience store clerks' "emotional expressions" (e.g., greetings, thanking behaviors, eye contact, smiling) with customers (Rafaeli & Sutton, 1990). These aforementioned investigations dealt primarily with sociality in the form of courtesies and pleasantries while disregarding more intimate interpersonal aspects of sociality, including sociabilities and privacies.

In their ethnographic study of an automobile service station, Koermer, Goldstein, and Petelle (1996) discovered that all four sociality types played an important part in creating and sustaining attendant-clientele relationships. However, it was not known whether the sociality dimensions were discrete and what the dimensions' relationships were to outcome variables such as customer satisfaction. Using the Service Provider Sociality Scale (SPSS) to assess customer satisfaction, Koermer, Ford, and Brant (2000) discovered that socialities consisted of two factors: courteous expressions (e.g., "This service person ... used good manners in your presence, seemed appreciative/thankful, asked how you were doing") and personal connection (e.g., "This service person.., told you a joke, discussed your personal likes and dislikes, discussed what you do for work"). The latter sociality factor was a compilation of pleasantries, sociabilities, and privacies. Courteous expressions and personal connection accounted for approximately 75% of the variance in customer satisfaction. However, courteous expressions contributed to nearly half of the unique variance in customer satisfaction beyond that explained by the personal connection factor.

Gremler and Gwinner (2000) examined the relationship between rapport and outcomes related to customer satisfaction, loyalty intent, and word-of-mouth communication. Respondents included bank customers and dental patients who completed a self-report questionnaire used to examine rapport. Results, in part, revealed that two dimensions of rapport--enjoyable interaction and personal connection-were significantly related to customer satisfaction. Worth noting is that the personal connection dimension of rapport examined customer perceptions of mutual liking or caring (e.g., "I look forward to seeing this person when I visit the bank/dental office," "I strongly care about this employee"). The present study regards its personal connection factorial dimension as more communicatively focused.

Gutek (1995) and her colleagues (Gutek, Bhappu, Liao-Troth, & Cherry, 1999; Gutek, Cherry, Bhappu, Schneider, & Woolf, 2000; Gutek, Groth, & Cherry, 2002) have made the distinction between service encounters, service relationships, and pseudorelationships. Service encounters are brief, one-time interactions in which the customer does not expect to interact with the provider in the future. Service relationships entail repeated customer interactions with a service provider resulting in a sense of interdependence between both parties. Pseudorelationships refer to repeat customer contact with a particular organization but receiving such service from different providers within the organization (e.g., making airline reservations with different attendants working for the same airline). All relational types focus on the "way customers respond to service, depending on the way service delivery is structured" (Gutek et al., 2000, p. 319).

Empirical studies of service encounters, relationships, and pseudorelationships have found that customers are more satisfied with their experience in service relationships than service encounters or pseudorelationships (Gutek et al., 1999, Gutek et al., 2000, Gutek et al., 2002). Specifically, the service provider and customer know more about each other, have predictable exchanges, develop personal friendships, and service relationships enhance trust for the customer (Gutek et al., 2000). Ford (2001) examined customer expectations for interactions with various service provider types (dentists, auto mechanics, fast-food employees, bank tellers, food servers). Results indicated that customer expectations for long-term (relationship orientation), short-term (encounter orientation), and personalized service communication (tailored service, designed to meet individual customer needs) varied significantly depending on service occupation types. For example, patrons expected long-term, committed relationships involving personalized service communication from health care providers, auto mechanics, and hairdressers. However, clientele expected short-term relationships with little personalized communication from fast-food employees, supermarket cashiers, bartenders, and convenience store clerks. Ford (2001) further discovered that customers expected courteous behaviors from providers to be kept at a minimum, especially during encounter-oriented service situations (e.g., while interacting with fast-food employees or convenience store clerks). Ford (2003) also discovered that customer perceptions of communication performance were more important in explaining variation in customer satisfaction and loyalty than customer expectations. Simply, customers were not satisfied or loyal to professional service providers who failed to provide personalized service.

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