A new conceptualisation

Thus far, the FSB literature has largely focused on studying the employee’s feedback seeking behaviour within the organization i.e. employee-supervisor, and employee-peer. There is yet to emerge a stream of literature that studies employee FSB towards customers, and how it might impact relational assets and performance measures. As seen in Table 2.1, none of the performance measures include important groups of operational performance measures such as customer mind-set (brand equity, perceived quality, satisfaction, attitudinal loyalty) and customer behaviour

(acquisition, retention, word of mouth) as outlined in Katsikeas et al. (2016). In other disciplines such as Management and Psychology, attitudinal and behavioural outcomes of FSB have already been studied. Table 2.1 leaves out such studies in the FSB literature which have found that FSB positively impacts outcomes such as creativity (Sijbom et al., 2018), task effectiveness, and social integration (Kim et al., 2009). Finally, all of the FSB measures in Table 2.1 are either self-rated, peer-rated or supervisor-rated, thus no connection has been made between the customer’s perception of the FLE’s FSB and customer-rated performance metrics.

This study insists that FSB is just as important in customer facing roles, and many of the findings in previous literature can be applied to this novel area of study. FSB can aid frontline employees (FLEs) gain better knowledge of customers, allowing companies to become more efficient at serving customers, thereby reducing selling costs as revenues increase over the term of the customer relationship (Ryals and Knox, 2001). Additionally, understanding customers better through regular feedback seeking can help to identify which customers are unprofitable, and help a firm better manage its portfolio of customers. In order to meet the objectives of this study, FSB was reconceptualised based on Gong et al.’s (2017) typology along valence (positive and negative) and focus (self and other). Drawing on Gong et al.’s definitions for the different types, we redefined these FSB types for use in the service context.

Self-positive FSB is defined as an employee’s inquiry of customers regarding positive aspects of the employee’s service delivery. Consistent with self-regulatory theory and goal orientation, individuals may seek information on aspects of their tasks that they are performing well in order to understand how close or far they are from an ultimate goal, or to manage others’ impressions of them. Gong et al. (2017) explain that individuals with a performance orientation are more concerned with impression

management than with skill or competency building, and are thus unlikely to create situations where their self-image may be compromised. Hence, these individuals are more likely to engage in self-positive FSB since it re-affirms their self-image. For example, a waiter could ask a customer if the customer was happy with the service in order to secure a tip, even if the waiter knew they only did an average job.

Self-negative FSB is defined as an employee’s inquiry of customers regarding negative aspects of the employee’s service delivery. Consistent with self-regulatory theory and goal orientation, individuals seek self-negative feedback in order to develop competencies (Gong et al., 2017). According Ashford and Cummings (1983), individuals would risk seeking potentially ego-damaging feedback for its informational value, helping to identify gaps in performance and areas of improvement. FLEs with this learning orientation would think nothing of asking customers if there was something they did wrongly, or were unable to meet expectations in order to improve their performance.

Firm-positive FSB is an employee’s inquiry of customers regarding positive aspects of the selling firm’s service delivery. Just as in the case for self-negative FSB, employees with a learning orientation may engage in firm-positive FSB to understand what the company does well, which can help FLEs to leverage on the firm’s strengths when engaging in selling tactics. Additionally, for individuals higher in learning orientation, firm-positive FSB poses less risk to the ego than self-negative FSB, while allowing the FLE to understand how better to be of service to the customer. For example, an ego-conscious novice service representative may not understand how best to fulfil a client’s needs, and may resort to asking the client what they have enjoyed about the firm’s services, or which products the client thought was amazing, in an effort to build rapport and devise an appropriate service or selling strategy.

Firm-negative FSB is an employee’s inquiry of customers regarding negative aspects of the selling firm’s service delivery. Gong et al. (2017) suggest that individuals may seek negative feedback on behalf of a third party for its diagnostic value, but also because it deflects any suggestion of incompetency to others rather than the individual themselves (Gong et al. 2017). This reason is why an ego-conscious FLE may try to tease out ways in which the firm has disappointed the customer, perhaps in order to remedy the situation, and claim the credit, or to change the narrative of a bad service encounter to avoid blame. These actions would work to protect the FLE’s image and ensure they are closer to their performance goals.

Reconceptualising FSB according to the Gong et al. (2017) typology presents a more holistic view of the diversity of communication that an FLE would have with customers. Anderson et al. (1987) explain that communication via frequent positive and negative feedback are important in establishing mutual trust and goal compatibility between two trading partners. Thus, FSB can be conceptualised as a form of communication, which is imperative in building trust, a central construct in the relationship marketing (Morgan and Hunt, 1994; Berry, 1995). Regarding FSB as communication is consistent with Grant and Ashford’s (2008) proactivity process perspective, and with Gong et al. (2012), which found that employees that employed information exchange in the workplace, a type of communication, were better able to build trust with their colleagues. Communication was found to be one of the greatest drivers of relational assets (e.g. trust, commitment, satisfaction) in a meta-analysis by Palmatier et al. (2006). Palmatier (2008) cites several authors (Anderson and Narus, 1990; Mohr and Nevin, 1990; Morgan and Hunt, 1994) that have concluded that "bilateral communication builds stronger relationships by helping resolve disputes, align goals and expectations, and uncover new value- creating opportunities." More

recently, viewing relationship states as dynamic, Zhang et al (2016) found that seller communication and compromise with buyers are helpful in moving relationships from a damaged state to a transactional state. Therefore, the service conceptualisation of FSB in this study incorporates the end goal of “attaining valued end states” as described in the Ashford (1986) definition, with the desired outcomes being “stronger relationships and uncovering new value-creating opportunities” as per Palmatier’s (2008) description of the role of communication in RM. Furthermore, the proposed typology is particularly useful in negative aspects of an FLE’s exchange with customers. For example, proactive employees that seek negative feedback are in essence drawing out complaints from customers. Bell et al. (2004) maintain that customer complaints can help companies make necessary changes to service quality and prevent losing customers to competitors.

This conceptualisation of FSB would also facilitate multilevel studies in service research, and in the instance of this project, to compare outcomes of the FLE’s FSB of their performance versus the FLE’s FSB of the firm’s performance. Firms use formal feedback seeking systems to gather information on customer attitudes and behaviours, which then informs their overall strategy, and has been shown in the literature to positively impact customer satisfaction. For example, the firm’s formal feedback system through post-interaction satisfaction surveys can have a positive effect on relationship quality (Flynn et al., 2017). The authors base their findings on the positivity effect in mere measurement theory, where asking customers to rate a company’s satisfaction signals that they are genuinely invested in the relationship and dedicated to improving service where needed. Thus, the positive impact of firm- positive FSB, albeit by FLEs, can be explained this way. Additionally, Voss et al. (2004) explain that customers’ satisfaction ratings are linked to a firm’s service quality

and customers’ expectations. Although their findings supported the use of formal feedback systems in driving customer satisfaction in the UK service context, where customers are less likely to directly voice complaints, their preface, which suggests the ease of employees in eliciting customer feedback in the US service context, points to the importance of informal FSB on customer satisfaction via customer interactions.

In summary, based on previous literature, this study positions FSB as communication (Morgan and Hunt, 1994), a functional benefit (Reynolds and Beatty, 1999), FLE trust-boosting behaviour (Sirdeshmukh et al., 2002), as well as a relationship-enhancing strategy (Palmatier et al., 2007a), and presents it in a familiar theoretical framework, where FLE behaviour influences customer relational states, which in turn have implications for diverse measures of performance.