Service Customization Through Employee Adaptiveness

TLDR

Customization strategies increasingly rely on front‑line employees, yet little research has examined how employee adaptiveness supports individualized service delivery. The study defines and empirically tests antecedents of interpersonal and service‑offering adaptive behavior among front‑line employees. Drawing on marketing, organizational behavior, and psychology, the authors develop a framework linking customer knowledge, personality traits, and intrinsic motivation to adaptive behavior. Findings show that higher customer knowledge, specific personality traits, and intrinsic motivation increase employees’ propensity to adapt both interpersonal style and service offerings, offering implications for segmentation, selection, training, and motivation.

Abstract

Customization strategies aimed at providing customers with individually tailored products and services are growing in popularity. In a service context, the responsibility for customization frequently falls on the shoulders of front-line customer contact employees. Few marketing scholars, however, have considered what it means to be adaptive in these roles and how customization behaviors can be encouraged. Drawing on marketing, organizational behavior, and psychology literatures, the authors define and empirically test antecedents of two distinct dimensions of employee adaptive behavior: interpersonal adaptive behavior and service-offering adaptive behavior. Results indicate that an employee’s level of customer knowledge, certain personality predispositions, and intrinsic motivation positively influence the propensity to adapt both their interpersonal style and the actual service offering. Implications for market segmentation, employee selection, training, and motivation are offered.