The Employee/Customer Interface: An Empirical Investigation of Employee Behaviors and Customer Perceptions

Popular, trade, and academic literature support the intuitively obvious notion that good customer relations behaviors enhance customer satisfaction. The present research investigated such behaviors by customer-contact employees by first assessing their frequency of practice in the bowling industry. Employees in bowling centers generally failed to practice most of the 16 relationship-building behaviors investigated during 62 audits. Next, survey results revealed variations in consumers’ perceptions of the relative importance of employee behaviors. For example, prompt service, a warm welcome, a courteous “thank you,” and refraining from smoking or chewing gum while serving the customer were rated as relatively important by most consumer segments. However, some variation in perceptions were observed across consumer groups, with the differences between league and nonleague bowlers being the most apparent. Recommendations are offered to customer-contact employees and to managers of sports organizations.