Impact Of Front-line Employees' Customer Orientation In Service Enterprises

After the Chinese economic reform, the proportion of the services industry in Chinese national economy increases dramatically. The development of the service industry has become the focus all over the world. Customers are the sources of enterprises'profits. In the service enterprises, front-line employees, providing services for customers face-to-face, represent the image of the service enterprises. They are the core components between customers and service enterprises. If the front-line employees can not provide high-quality services for customers, the marketing activities of the enterprises will fail.Many scholars consider that front-line employees'customer orientation influences customer perception of service quality, customer satisfaction, customer commitment. After the Chinese economic reform, many companies began to introduce customer orientation concept o However, there is no empirical research that concentrates on whether or how customer orientation affect customer satisfaction and customer commitment are on the basis on Chinese data. In this paper, the impact of customer orientation is empirically tested. The relationship of customer orientation from the employees'perspective and customer orientation from the customers' perspective is analyzed. Furthermore, the relationship between customer orientation and service quality, customer satisfaction, customer commitment is discussed. This research will broaden the existing theory and provide suggestions for enterprises about how to recruit proper employees. What's more, the research will benefit the services industry. The conclusion of this paper is summarized as follows.(1) The customer orientation scale which is developed by Donavan covers two categories. One type is evaluated by the customers, and the other type is assessed by the employees. Both the two types has a good reliability and reasonable structure in Chinese banks.(2) Customer orientation that is evaluated by the customers influences service quality, customer satisfaction and customer commitment positively. Customer orientation that is evaluated by the customers has a positive impact on service quality. The degree of customer orientation is higher and consequently the rating of service quality is higher. Customer orientation has a positive impact on customer satisfaction. With the higher degree of customer orientation, customers are more satisfied. Customer orientation has a positive impact on customer commitment. With the higher degree of customer orientation, the customers will be more commitment to the bank and customers will continue to receive services in the bank. Furthermore, customers will recommend others to receive services in the bank.(3) Customer orientation that is evaluated by the employees has no significant impact on service quality, customer satisfaction, and customer commitment.(4) Customer orientation that is evaluated by the employees has no relationship with the customer orientation which is assessed by the customers. Employees' perspective can not reflect customers'perspective.In the future, research should be conducted to establish a complete model. More data and more research methods can be used to conduct a depth study.