Date of Defense

4-18-2024

Date of Graduation

4-2024

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Sharlet Rafacz

Second Advisor

Kate Martini

Third Advisor

Sean Borboa

Abstract

A key concern for restaurants is good customer service as it directly relates to repeated customers and revenue generation. Customer service plays a large role in keeping a business up and running, without appropriate customer-employee interactions, a business may cease to exist. The field of Organizational Behavior Management (OBM) has several empirically-based interventions that may help. One of these interventions, job aids, gives a brief description of what is expected and can be consulted by an employee at any point in time. However, most research uses a package intervention and has not examined the effects of job aids alone. The purpose of this study was to evaluate if a job aid could improve customer service behaviors by restaurant hosts. The study included four hosts ranging from 15 to 25 years old and took place at a locally owned restaurant. The job aid was introduced in a single-case multiple-baseline design across individuals (hosts) to experimentally evaluate the efficacy of this intervention. Results were somewhat inconsistent with a slight improvement in customer service behaviors for some participants. However, further research needs to be conducted on the most effective way to implement job aids and if additional interventions are necessary to improve customer service in a restaurant setting. Literature

Access Setting

Honors Thesis-Open Access

Download

Included in

Psychology Commons

Share

COinS