Empathy and delight in a personal service setting. Issue 1 (February 2020) - Nguyen, Thi Nguyet Que
Highlights: Employee empathy relates positively to employee deep acting. Employee deep acting relates positively to perceived service quality. Employee deep acting mediates the effect of employee empathy on perceived service quality. Perceived service quality mediates the effect of deep acting on customer delight. Employee deep acting and perceived service quality sequentially mediate the effect of employee empathy on customer delight. Abstract: This study examines the mechanisms through which employee empathy is related to customer delight in a personal service setting where customers and frontline employees interact to produce and deliver a service. Building on trait-behavior-performance relation, we propose that there exists an indirect relationship between employee empathy and customer delight with the employee, and that employee deep acting and perceived service quality would independently and serially mediate the empathy-satisfaction relationship. Health care is an appropriate context for examining the role of empathy in customer-employee interactions because of the depth and variance of service experiences. Our sample includes 154 dyads of customers (patients) and service employees (doctors), who were surveyed after a patient and a doctor completed a health consultation, diagnosis or treatment. Our findings suggest that special attention should be paid to leverage deep acting and empathy dimensions of health care. Specifically, health care managers should concentrate on the improvement of competency and capability of medical employees and establishment of a sincere and authentic relationship between patients and employees to achieve patient delight. Chinese Abstract: 本研究探讨了基于顾客和员工互相交流以此生产并提供服务的个人服务环境中, 员工的同理心与客户满意度之间的关系.在特质-行为-绩效关系的基础上, 我们提出员工同理心与顾客对员工的满意度之间存在间接的关系, 员工的深层行为与感知服务质量会独立地, 连续地调节同理心-满意度关系.我们选择了医疗保健行业作为研究对象, 基于该行业的服务经验的深度和多样性, 是检查同理心在客户-员工互动中的作用的适当环境.我们的样本包括154对客户 (患者) 和服务人员 (医生), 他们是在患者和医生完成健康咨询, 诊断或治疗后进行调查的.我们的研究结果表明, 应该特别注意利用医疗保健的深层行为和同理心维度.具体来说, 医疗管理者应该专注于提高医务人员的能力, 建立一种真诚可信的医患关系, 以达到愉悦病人的目的.