From Employee Experience to Customer Loyalty: HRM–Marketing Integration for Service Excellence

The proposed research proposes to analyze the relationship between Customer Loyalty (CL) and employee experience (EX) and the mediating effect of customer experience (CX) and the mediating effect of Human Resource Management Marketing (HRM Marketing) integration in the progress to service excellence. The mixed method approach was applied with quantitative data being obtained using questionnaires distributed to 302 employees and 318 customers of hospitality, retail banking services, healthcare, and other service industries and qualitative information was obtained by interviewing 18 HR and marketing managers. SEM has also shown that EX has a big impact on HRM-Marketing integration as well as the CX and that CX was also the best predicator of CL. Mediation analysis validated that CX mediates the impacts of EX and HRM marketing integration on CL, and integration having stronger indirect impact when compared with that of EX alone. Thematic analysis of interviews revealed three strategic enablers of service excellence, namely alignment of the internal and external brand messaging, cross-functional metrics of performance, and employee empowerment culture. The results contribute to the Service Profit Chain model as it has been shown that cross-functional integration further accentuates the EXCXCL connection, and this has both theoretical and practical implications to the managers who aim to achieve sustainable competitive advantage by the level of service and brand consistency.