Customer service behaviors play a critical role in determining customer satisfaction. However, studies examining how employees’ job crafting affects customer service behaviors are scant. The objective of this study is to examine the effect of job crafting on customer service behaviors and to clarify the mediating role of job passion. Survey data from 518 hotel employees demonstrate that job crafting is positively related to harmonious passion. Harmonious passion is positively associated with role-prescribed service behaviors and extra-role service behaviors. Obsessive passion is positively associated with extra-role service behaviors. Moreover, harmonious passion mediates the association between job crafting and customer service behaviors. This study extends current knowledge regarding job crafting and examines the associations among job crafting, job passion, and customer service behaviors. The results can serve as a reference for mangers in human resources practices and services management.

Introduction

In the hospitality setting, empowering individuals to perform their job content has become a crucial topic (Chia and Chu, 2017; Lin et al., 2017). In addressing diverse customer needs, hospitality employees should not only perform service work based on their company’s basic principles but also exceed customer expectations and provide prompt, high-quality service (Barnes et al., 2016). Therefore, customer service behaviors play a critical role in hospitality settings (Cheng and Chen, 2017). Customer service behaviors consist of service employees’ positive service behaviors toward customers and include two main classifications: role-prescribed service behaviors and extra-role service behaviors (Cheng et al., 2018; Chow et al., 2015). Studies have determined that customer service behaviors can increase customer satisfaction and perceived service quality (Tsaur et al., 2014). Therefore, promoting hospitality employees’ customer service behaviors has become a crucial concern for managers. Job crafting has captured the attention of hospitality researchers (Cheng and O-Yang, 2018; Kim et al., 2018a). Wrzesniewski and Dutton (2001) define job crafting as employees making physical and cognitive adjustments to the task or relational scope of their jobs. During a service delivery process, because hospitality service employees must be in close contact with customers and meet diverse and unexpected customer needs, these employees must design their job roles and adapt to them. Therefore, job crafting is a relatively key topic in hospitality settings (Cheng and O-Yang, 2018; Kim et al., 2018b).