The effect of work climate on critical employee and customer outcomes

This paper examines several work climate variables and their impact on service quality. While there exists a variety of work climates relevant to contact employees during service encounters, this study investigates two components for successful implementation of internal marketing, service climate and supportive management. Both climate variables are proposed to affect the attitudes and behaviors of employees, and consequently affect customers’ perceptions of employees’ service performance. This study, which combines perceptions from customers and their contact employees, shows that both climate variables contribute directly to job satisfaction and work effort, and indirectly impact on customers’ perceptions of employee service quality. Also, the empirical results indicate that in addition to job satisfaction, employees’ work effort also plays a strong, central role in determining customers’ perceptions of employee service quality.