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On the basis of previous studies of source credibility and opinion leadership, the authors hypothesized that opinion leaders would serve as effective agents to promote positive attitudes toward a service-quality initiative and increase service-quality effectiveness. The service effectiveness of tellers before and after a service-quality leadership training program was rated by customers, supervisors, and the tellers themselves across 3 matched bank branches. Service effectiveness was rated significantly higher in a branch using opinion leaders as service-quality leaders compared with a branch using randomly selected frontline leaders. Tellers in the latter branch showed greater improvements in service effectiveness than did counterparts in a branch using no frontline service quality leaders. This difference between types of leaders appeared to be mediated by tellers' behavioral beliefs about the service-quality program.
Lam et al. (Sat,) studied this question.