Category: Customer Interactions

In this post, Dr Richard Nicholls discusses how frontline employees (FLEs) can offer valuable insights into situations where customers interact with the other customers around them during the consumption of a service. This area of research, usually known as customer-to-customer interaction (CCI) or C2C interaction, has predominantly been investigate from a customer perspective but there are clear advantages to also gaining an employee perspective. 

It has long been realised that as services are produced and consumed, that the customer is often ‘in the factory’. This makes managing services very different from managing manufacturing. There has been a vast amount of research on how employees and customers interact with one another (Subramony et al., 2021). But since the 1970s academics have become increasingly aware that customers also interact with each other, and this can influence how a service is experienced (Heinonen & Nicholls, 2022). This field is usually referred to conceptually as customer-to-customer interaction (CCI) or as customer-to-customer (C2C). Examples of CCI include a noisy passenger on a train, another shopper being extremely slow at the checkout, or, on a positive note, another customer providing some useful information.

The emergence of CCI and its focus on the customer’s perspective

There was relatively little published on CCI until a landmark article by Martin and Pranter (1989) spawned some significant pioneer publications in the 1990s (e.g., Baron, Harris, & Davies, 1996; Grove & Fisk, 1997). Developments such as the growth of the internet, the expansion of self-service technology and the growing interest in relationship marketing, served to fuel research interest in C2C in the noughties. Indeed, by the end of that decade it was considered that “the study of CCI has now joined the mainstream of service management research” (Nicholls, 2010, p. 94). Indeed, the same article, entitled ‘New directions for customer-to-customer interaction research’, catalysed further research into CCI (Colm et al., 2017; Nguyen & Menezes, 2021). Today, research into CCI has addressed a wide range of topics, including: the conceptualisation of CCI; the contexts that are associated with CCI; types of CCI; customer similarity and CCI; CCI and blame attribution; and the management of CCI (Nicholls, 2024).

When reviewing the CCI literature it becomes clear that most empirical studies are based on examining the customer perspective on CCI. These empirical studies take different approaches: some observe customers as they consume in service settings; some ask customers (on exit from the service setting) to recall any CCI experienced during the visit; some ask a sample to recall a memorable past incident of CCI, and so on. But ultimately, most studies describe CCI from a customer or customer-like perspective rather than through the eyes of the employee. This blog piece will focus on employees and CCI.

Frontline employees (FLEs) and CCI

The frontline employee is mentioned in the CCI literature. Indeed, over the last three decades the role of the FLE in managing CCI has received regular mention (Nicholls, 2024). In particular, the FLE service recovery role following C2C service failure has been highlighted (e.g., McQuilken et al., 2017). Likewise, some authors have discussed the views of customers on FLE responses to CCI (e.g., Hoffman & Lee, 2014). A few authors have pointed out that the FLE can be a contributor to negative CCI (e.g., Dorsey et al., 2016). However, although the FLE is frequently mentioned in the CCI literature (although often superficially), rarely has CCI been examined from the FLE perspective. Issues such as how perceptive FLEs are of CCI, or how they feel when dealing with CCI, have received extremely limited research attention (Nicholls & Gad Mohsen, 2019).

Nicholls and Gad Mohsen (2019) argue for the merits of seeking an employee perspective and present their research into CCI at a major library. The aim was to ground the investigation in employees’ experiences, using in-depth interviews with FLEs, to understand how employees notice, process and respond to CCI. The paper provides several findings that improve awareness of the value and nature of FLE insights into CCI. The study showed that employees could provide CCI insights that customers could not. It also revealed that employees could experience stress from managing C2C interaction and that the unpredictability surrounding customer reactions to employee intervention could be a major source of FLE stress. Furthermore, the study established that C2C interactions often took the form of triads, involving the FLE and two customer parties, and, as such, the study significantly extended understanding of the scope of triadic interactions.

Improving understanding of the FLE perspective on CCI

Far more needs to be understood about the FLE perspective on CCI. Two major areas for future research are (a) acquiring FLE insights to improve understanding of CCI and its management, and (b) improving understanding of the impact of dealing with CCI on FLE wellbeing (Nicholls, 2024). Regarding the former, key research issues include how FLEs acquire skills in handing difficult CCI situations; the approaches service organisations use to prepare FLEs for handling CCI situations; and FLE views on the adequacy of their training to handle CCI situations. Regarding the latter, key research issues include the long- and short-term psychological consequences of dealing with challenging CCI situations; the strategies adopted by FLEs to cope with CCI-induced stress; and the differences and similarities between handling difficult employee-to-customer interactions and difficult C2C interactions. Furthermore, building on Nicholls and Gad Mohsen (2019), further research into the service context in which an employee is interacting with two separate customer parties simultaneously has the potential to open up a new research front in the field of triadic interactions. 

Dr Richard Nicholls

Richard is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Marketing and Enterprise at Worcester Business School and the Customer Interactions Research Theme (CIRT) Lead.  He is a member of the Interpersonal Relationships and Wellbeing Research Group. Richard has published extensively on customer-to-customer interaction (CCI) in leading service journals and in specialist academic research books. 

In this post, Dr Richard Nicholls discusses how the other customers around us during the consumption of a service can exert an influence on how we experience that service. This area of research, usually known as customer-to-customer interaction (CCI) or C2C interaction, is expanding rapidly.

The second half of the 20^th century saw a growing awareness of the dominance of the service economy. An important consequence of this is that services and their management have received increasing research attention. Evidence of this can be found in the proliferation of service journals over recent decades. For example, the Journal of Services Marketing; the Journal of Service Research; Journal of Service Management; and The Service Industries Journal. A core theme of service research has been customer interaction. The scope of customer interaction has broadened over the decades. In the early years of service research, the focus was on human interactions with employees, but these days interaction research includes interactions with brands, websites, virtual digital assistants, service robots and with other customers.

The growing realisation that interactions between customers are important

In the 1980s and 1990s there was a prevalent customer interaction research focus on interactions between frontline employees and customers (i.e., E2C interaction). It was, however, increasingly realised that many interactions occurred between the customers themselves (i.e., customer-to-customer or C2C interaction). Early work helped to conceptualise how C2C interaction could be understood and to identify areas for future research. The growth of the internet, and new service formats enabled by the internet, made more people receptive to the idea that customers can co-create (or co-destroy) value with one another.   Furthermore, partly due to the rapid growth of self-service, it was realised that some services had more C2C than E2C interaction. Moreover, as suggestions increasingly came forwards for ways of managing interactions between customers, growing numbers of managers and researchers felt C2C to be a field worth investigating.

A focus on C2C interactions inside service settings

The influence of customers on one another is a wide-ranging research theme (Heinonen et al., 2018; Heinonen & Nicholls, 2022). Whilst much C2C influence takes place away from the service setting through consumers exchanging views, often in their own social circles, on the merits of various products and providers, this is generally labelled word-of-mouth (WOM). Moreover, it is not specifically connected with services, as much WOM concerns goods. Following a ground-breaking paper by Martin and Pranter (1989), some service researchers have focused on the C2C influence occurring in service settings themselves, often referring to this as CCI (customer-to-customer interaction). Three main groupings of CCI exist. The first is in-group interaction, which is often seen as family or group consumption behaviour and concerns how family and/or friends in a group interact with one another during service consumption (e.g., shopping together). The second group is the influence of other customers, typically strangers and not family or friends, who merely happen to be part of the scene and exert indirect influence such as contributing to the collective ambiance of a service setting. A third group is direct interactions in a service setting between customers, typically strangers, who have entered the setting separately. Such interactions, known as direct on-site CCI (Nicholls, 2010), are often short and unplanned. Some C2C interactions can, however, be quite extended, especially in industries such as travel, tourism, and education.

Interactions between customers take many forms

The author’s research has focused mainly on direct on-site CCI. It has included conceptualising such interactions, identifying types, and considering how these interactions can be managed. In a recent paper (Nicholls, 2020), the author identified nine distinct categories of CCI: (1) shared use space, (2) assigned space and possessions, (3) information provision, (4) assistance, (5) social conversations, (6) disrespectful attitude, (7) queuing discipline, (8) transaction efficiency and (9) undesired customers and ‘camouflaged customers’. These categories are designed to accommodate most of the customer behaviours that affect the service experience of other customers as consumers attempt to do things like share a common space with strangers, queue for service, and ask or offer assistance to strangers. For example, the ‘shared use space’ category reflects the reality that in many service settings, such as trains, libraries and cinemas, common space exists that needs to be recognised as sufficiently under a customer’s control or influence to gain appropriate benefit from the service. An illustration of this is the desire of many customers for a train environment that excludes other passengers playing their music loudly or talking persistently on their mobiles. The article (Nicholls, 2020) provides detailed descriptions, discussion, and illustrations of all nine categories. It also provides a 38-question audit tool to assist practitioners in identifying the aspects of CCI that are most pertinent to their organisation. Understanding that customers rarely consume alone and can be influenced, both positively and negatively, by the other customers surrounding them, offers a useful path for gaining fresh insights into customer care. Moreover, the relevance of interactions between customers has never been more relevant than in these Covid-dominated times, with concerns such as how near others are, why others are loitering by the shop entrance, and who has touched what (e.g., a shopping trolley handle) before us.

Dr Richard Nicholls

Richard is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Marketing and Enterprise at Worcester Business School and the Customer Interactions Research Theme (CIRT) Lead, which is part of the Interpersonal Relationships and Wellbeing Research Group. Richard has published extensively on customer-to-customer interaction (CCI) in leading service journals and in specialist academic research books.  Three members of the group are currently working on a project that examines the management of customer-to-customer interaction in supermarkets. Research is also underway into how family members may influence one another’s food consumption.