RespectWork - Developing mutual respect in customer interactions to improve work and service quality RespectWork - Developing mutual respect in customer interactions to improve work and service quality

In many service professions, direct contact with customers is a major part of the work. In recent years, employees have reported an increasing lack of respect on the part of customers, resulting in demanding or even challenging behavior. But customers also often feel that they are not treated with respect when it comes to the careful and prudent handling of their requests. This creates a vicious circle of mutual disrespect, which can escalate to aggressive behavior. This is a highly stressful situation for employees in the long term - and has a significant negative impact on productivity and quality for service companies. The underlying phenomenon of (lack of) mutual respect has not yet been addressed in labor and service research. This research and design gap is to be closed by the project.

Taking the retail sector as an example, the project investigates how interactions between employees and their customers can be designed in such a way as to generate or promote mutual respect. With around 300,000 companies, annual sales of over 480 billion euros, almost three million employees and around 160,000 trainees, the retail sector is the third-largest economic sector in Germany. However, the sector has long been characterized by massive competition, increasing concentration, expansion of retail space and a declining share of private consumption. In addition, sales in the retail sector have been stagnating for years, with the exception of online retailing. Furthermore, advancing digitalization is forcing structural change in retail and influencing its future.

Respect and disrespect have been increasingly addressed by companies and employees in the retail sector in recent years. The "brutalization" described above also leads to personnel problems in companies that can no longer be solved via the labor market in the age of a shortage of skilled workers.

Up to now, there has been a lack of adequate, practical concepts for dealing with this specific issue, both in terms of advising employees and companies. Operational actors often see themselves hardly in a position to adequately meet the associated challenges. This applies to both the appropriate recording and description of conflictual situations and the classification against the background of a basic understanding of professionalism in service relationships with customers, as well as the development and implementation of appropriate measures for the avoidance and mediation of conflicts with customers and for the necessary support of employees.

Employees often personalize their difficulties in dealing with customers and experience the conflicts as personal failures or see the "blame" on the customers. They are faced with the dilemma of either behaving aggressively toward the customers - which contradicts the customer orientation in the companies and usually intensifies the problem - or perceiving the experienced "failure" at work as their own fault. Both lead to a loss of one's own sense of self-efficacy and thus to a perceived devaluation of one's own professional competence. In the long term, this can have a negative impact on (especially psychological) health, and it can also lead to employees changing professions. As a result, they are lost to the labor market as skilled workers.

Idea

The aim of the project is to shape the framework conditions of service interactions as well as the concrete behavior of service providers and their customers in such a way that mutual respect is generated or promoted. It is not about making service personnel fit for disrespectful customers, but about creating conditions for respectful interaction.

The project therefore aims to develop concrete measures and recommendations on how employees interacting with customers, as well as service companies, can establish respectful interactions with their clientele. This involves the design of the interaction itself (how to give respect, how to demand respect?) as well as the operational framework conditions. From a scientific point of view, the project will investigate how respect (or disrespectful behavior) develops and how employees, companies, industry representatives and society can develop a new attitude toward respect in the interaction between customers and service providers.

The main goals of the project are to improve the quality of work and services through respectful interaction. Four topics are at the forefront of the project. They relate to the customer, the company actors, the company organization and the use of technology. With regard to concrete design measures, the following topics and issues are to be pursued in the project with regard to the main objectives:

• Improvement of the interaction with the clientele: How can service promises of the companies be designed, e.g. in advertising, which can also be honestly kept in the perception of the clientele? How can customers be addressed so that they feel treated with respect by the company and its employees?
• Qualification of employees, managers and interest groups: How can employees learn to deal with (difficult) customers in training measures? What can supervisors do to ensure that their employees are treated with respect? What can a works council or staff council do to promote respect in service work?
• Optimization of the operational organization: How can the service situation be structured in such a way that the behavior of the employees is comprehensible and understandable for the clientele? How can disputes with customers be settled, how can staff be protected from assaults? How can the operational framework be designed in such a way that it contributes to respectful mutual interaction?
• Supportive use of technology: How can the interaction between customers and sales staff be designed respectfully on this new technological basis?

Planned results

The outcome is to develop practical information, education and consulting products that can be transferred to other industries and that support respectful interaction at various levels of intervention.

The project should generate sustainable effects for companies and employees and also on a societal level. Therefore, the results and experiences of the project are to be transferred into practicable and thus directly usable products, which can be transferred by the institutional partners (ver.di and trade association) into the area of the branches.

The following products are to be created:

• The project provides scientific findings on the meaning of respect in service relationships and on the design of operational framework conditions of respect in interaction work.
• A significant result is an institutionalized further training offer on the topic of respect for employees in service industries. The aim is to enable employees to treat customers with respect and at the same time to demand respect in their interactions.
• The project develops consulting services that support companies in creating service structures that promote respectful interactions between customers and employees in the retail sector. This primarily concerns organizational structures of interaction, but also influencing the mutual expectations between customers and service providers.
• For the counseling of affected employees, concepts are developed that enable a better understanding of individual experiences with difficult situations in customer relationships and contribute to the development of improved coping strategies in dealing with stressful situations. This will contribute to the preservation of health and employability and prevent premature withdrawal from the profession or employment.
• The transfer of the results and products is to be supported at industry level by specific information. This information should sensitize the companies of an industry to the issue of respect and at the same time show the possibilities for action.
• A tool for risk assessment with regard to stressful customer relationships is intended to support companies in taking greater account of the issue in their risk assessment.
• In cooperation with the transfer partners ver.di and the trade association, the smaller companies in particular are to be made aware of the topic. This will be done through specific events and lectures, business breakfasts, etc.
• The highlight of the transfer is an event with the working title "1st German Day of Respect in the Service Sector". Here, the project actors will discuss and promote a new approach to respect in the interaction between customers and service providers with important social promoters (business, trade unions, politics, culture). This event will be the starting point for further activities, which will not only be fed from the project context, but also from different areas of the economy and society, and thus ensure the sustainability and transferability of the project results.

• Deutsche Angestellten-Akademie GmbH DAA Westfalen, Bielefeld
• Arbeit & Gesundheit e.V., Hamburg
• Trade Association North Rhine-Westphalia Westphalia-Münsterland e.V., Dortmund
• B. Frieling Service- und Dienstleistungen GmbH & Co. KG, Coesfeld

The aim of the project is to shape the framework conditions of service interactions as well as the concrete behavior of service providers and their clientele in such a way that mutual respect is generated or promoted. The main aim is to create the conditions for respectful interactions. Scientifically, the question is to be investigated how respect (or disrespectful behavior) develops and how employees, companies, industry representatives and society can develop a new attitude towards respect in the interaction between customer and service provider.

The "RespectWork" project aims to empirically analyze the structures, processes and working conditions of service work, taking digital change into account. It aims to develop measures and offers for broad support of operational business, competence development and work design.

In the first phase (survey), the analysis of work structures, working conditions and interaction situations along the service relationships takes place. The focus of interest is also on concrete changes due to digitized work processes, requirements and competence profiles of different employee groups in the companies.

The necessary work steps in the first phase are scientific research work, interviews, short case studies and more detailed case analyses. The results of the analyses will be transformed into a precise description of requirements for the development of instruments.

On this basis, needs-based concepts for respectful interaction in service work will be developed in the second phase (development): Organizational interventions for companies, i.e., an action model for companies to design respectful interactions, and competence development strategies, i.e., a concrete digital training offer for employees. The information, education, and consulting offerings are combined within the framework of a procedural model, thus integrating organizational intervention with individual continuing education.

In the third phase (testing), the approaches are applied and tested. This is done in three steps: In the alpha phase, individual modules are tested in the partner companies. In the beta phase, the overall approach is introduced to the companies. On the basis of a formative evaluation, short-cycle optimizations of individual modules and processes are implemented.

Transfer (phase four) takes place through media information, events and publication as well as cooperation with associations, trade unions and networks. The products developed in the project are to be transferred to the retail sector during the project period and to other service sectors after the end of the project.

The measures resulting from the individual phases will be worked on by an interdisciplinary team (social science, psychology, business administration, labor science) in close cooperation with practitioners and associations as well as trade unions.

www.respectwork.de