Frontline employees’ compliance with fuzzy requests: A request–appraisal–behavior perspective

While fuzzy requests from customers are pervasive in service encounters, it is lacking understanding of how to manage these kind of requests. By combining health belief model and theory of planned behavior, this study proposes a request–appraisal–behavior paradigm to elucidate frontline employees’ compliance with fuzzy requests. The research model is empirically examined with data collected from 256 frontline restaurant employees. The results show that compliance behavior is negatively influenced by conflict susceptibility, request severity, and punishment expectation, but positively influenced by satisfaction reward expectation, customer orientation norms, and job autonomy. The moderating effects of customer orientation norms and job autonomy on the relationships among satisfaction reward expectation (punishment expectation) and compliance behavior are also demonstrated. This study is among the first theoretical explorations of compliance behavior toward customer’ fuzzy requests. It also offers effective strategies for service providers and frontline employees to manage and cope with fuzzy requests.