Standing in the Customers Shoes: Joint Effects of Perspective Taking and Proactive Personality on Customer Service Performance

The effect of perspective taking on performance is well documented, yet little theoretical discussion details how employees’ adoption of a customer perspective might result in more satisfactory customer service performance (e.g., Parker & Axtell, 2001). To fill this void, the current study draws from both motivated information processing and proactivity perspectives to propose a theoretical model that delineates the process by which customer-oriented perspective taking contributes to customer service performance. Drawing on motivated information processing theory (De Dreu et al. 2000), we move beyond a typical perspective taking–performance framework and examine instead how employees adopting the perspective of customers enhance their in-role and proactive customer service performance through role breadth self-efficacy (RBSE). Motivated information processing theory states that people’s cognitive processing is shaped by their own motivation. People selectively notice, encode, and remember information consistent with their desires and beliefs. Active role-taking efforts markedly reduce the degree of difference between the usual perspective taker (i.e., customer service employees) and the target (i.e., customers) (Davis et al. 1996). When employees engage in active role taking, by helping customers, they make a greater effort to interpret cues and persuade themselves that they possess sufficient capabilities to perform a broader set of roles than typically required to serve customers. Our study further examines the role of a proactive personality in moderating the association between perspective taking and RBSE, as well as customer service performance. When taking the perspective of the others, customer service employees are probably not just passively encoding the target’s (i.e., customer’s) viewpoints but also shape the situation and adjust their roles proactively to reduce the perspective taker–target difference. Proactive employees likely go beyond the call of duty to deliver outstanding customer service. Grant and Parker (2009) note that interdependence and uncertainty are two of the most important challenges for both organizations and employees; research has seldom integrated the two perspectives in one study to explore the possible cross-influences between them. To test these predictions, a three-wave, time-lagged field survey of 500 employees will be conducted, with data collected from frontline service employees, their immediate supervisors, and their direct customers in the Chinese hospitality industry. Multilevel, fuzzy set, quantitative analysis will be used to analyze the information gathered across various levels (employees and their immediate supervisors) and sources (employees and their customers), to reduce common method variance.