دانلود رایگان مقاله تاثیر بازتاب مجازی بر رضایت مشتری

ABSTRACT

We investigate the impact of a novel method called “virtual mirroring” to promote employee self-reflection and impact customer satisfaction. The method is based on measuring communication patterns, through social network and semantic analysis, and mirroring them back to the individual. Our goal is to demonstrate that self-reflection can trigger a change in communication behaviors, which lead to increased customer satisfaction. We illustrate and test our approach analyzing e-mails of a large global services company by comparing changes in customer satisfaction associated with team leaders exposed to virtual mirroring (the experimental group). We find an increase in customer satisfaction in the experimental group and a decrease in the control group (team leaders not involved in the virtual mirroring process). With regard to the individual communication indicators, we find that customer satisfaction is higher when employees are more responsive, use a simpler language, are embedded in less centralized communication networks, and show more stable leadership patterns.

6. Research limitations, future research and conclusions

While mirroring sessions represent a less expensive and complementary method to promote organizational awareness, we need to recognize their potential costs, which are largely related to potential psychological effects on participants. This is a common problem of many feedback interventions, which are all based on the assumption that a positive feedback equates with reinforcement and a negative one equates with punishment (Kluger & DeNisi, 1996). We believe our experimental results offer an important contribution to the extant literature trying to shed light on the effect of feedback interventions in organizations. Creating an organizational structure that helps employees reflect on their level of engagement with customers via their own communication will help them make sense of the situation around them, reduce ambiguity, and establish meaningful relationships within and across organizational boundaries (Holt & Cornelissen, 2014). By correlating communication patterns with customer satisfaction we find that variables such as responsiveness and steady communication are important factors to predict customer satisfaction. By mirroring these factors back to the employees, we can start a process of self-awareness and personal development that will have a positive impact on customer satisfaction. This study is based on an experiment run at a large global service company. The nature of the industry represents a possible limitation on how we interpret data. In the service industry there is a demand on employees to be more sensitive to customer needs because that is the measure of effectiveness, while manufacturing employees might use other measures of effectiveness that focus less on personal relationships (Clampitt & Downs, 1993). However, workers in different industries rely more and more on digital communications to get their job done, thus we would not be surprised to obtain similar results in other knowledge-intensive industries. Our study focused mainly on managers' communication behaviors, thus our results might not be generalized to employees at all levels.