Screen Your Service Face

Including on a store’s website photos of the store owner and of the bricks-and-mortar interior reduce feelings of psychological distance and increase interest in shopping through the store’s online channel. But much greater gains could come from featuring photos on the website of the people in your organization who solve post-purchase problems.
     Studies at KEDGE Business School in France, Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany, University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, and Babson College in the U.S. show that photos of the customer service staff improve perceptions of service quality among shoppers who haven’t yet made a purchase and also among customers who are assessing from memory how good the service quality was. Seeing the photo of who provided you service makes you feel better about what the person in that photo did for you. Ratings of the employee’s competence and commitment also improve. It actually changes the memories.
     The researchers say this simple step of including the photos will provide a distinctive business advantage because it’s done so infrequently. They report that fewer than 15% of service firms in the S&P 500 listing use the technique.
     One mechanism of action is the humanization of the transaction. Providing information about the customer service representative might also do this. Another mechanism of action is accountability. Knowing their photo is on the website could lead to the service representative being more conscientious, and so delivering objectively better service. The customer might acknowledge this in their mind only when later being cued by looking at the photo.
     A third mechanism of action has to do with the presence of a photo in itself. Even when the theme of a photo is objectively irrelevant to the thrust of a message, influence builds. Researchers at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand presented study participants with declarative statements like, “Giraffes are the only mammals that cannot jump,” and, “Turtles are deaf.” These statements were chosen because most people are unsure of their truth. The purchase decision in the study was not for merchandise, but instead for a belief.
     Those participants shown a photo of a giraffe along with the statement were more likely to say it was true than were the participants shown only the statement. Similarly, a photo of a turtle injected credibility into the “Turtles are deaf” statement.
     In all these cases, photos probably work better than drawings because of the additional realism.

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