Difference of Employee Customer Orientation between Service and Production Departments and Its Effects on Job Outcomes

Abstract

The current research aims to reveal how frontline employees working in both service and production departments differ in their customer orientation, and further to explore the effect of customer orientation on job effort and job performance of all employees. Based on the survey data of 828 frontline employees from 81 teams in a large technical service company, multilevel analysis showed that: a) compared with employees in production departments, those in service departments had stronger customer orientation, were rated by their immediate supervisors as with a higher level of job effort and better job performance; and b) customer orientation mediated the effects of department function on job effort and job performance. This study contributed to the customer orientation research by demonstrating how customer orientation could help increase employee’s effort and job performance in service or production department, and by cross validating the positive effect of employee customer orientation in the technical service organization--a relatively new context. Moreover, the findings also had practical implications for companies in implementing the customer-oriented strategy.