Scripting Employees

Abstract

Because customers can recognize when hospitality firms are employing service scripts, an examination is in order to determine how customers perceive scripted service. This article assesses customer perceptions of scripted service encounters with both content analysis and quantitative analysis of more than 2,000 open-ended customer responses to a survey addressing service scripts. The study found both task- and treatment-related implications for customer reactions to scripted service. Customers’ overall sentiment toward scripting is more positive when they are focusing on task-related outcomes, but their comments turned more negative when they considered treatment-related implications, particularly when they detected employee insincerity in regard to the script. Management should consider these findings carefully because customers in this survey gave more notice to treatment-related issues than they did to task-related outcomes for the scripted service. A key implication is that managers may wish to reserve tight scripting for simple services for which efficiency is valued, such as hotel check-in or seating guests in a restaurant. For more complex services, scripts should be flexible, and managers should seek employee buy-in so that they are internalizing the script elements, rather than merely “surface acting.”