HOW CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AND LOYALTY CAN BE AFFECTED BY EMPLOYEE’S PERCEIVED EMOTIONAL COMPETENCE: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF RAPPORT

Recent years have witnessed a dramatic change in the service encounters due to change in the behaviors of customers, emerging demands of customers and new trends in the hair styles have led the employees to take care of customers emotions. In this regard, the objective of our research is to recognize and point out the elements that has influence on the customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, more specifically our spot light would be on the factors which build the reputation and relationship with the customers. Several researchers have worked on this topic and have proved the positive relationship of the employee emotional competence on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty and rapport mediates the relationship and our results have proved same. Using the causal research design in this research, survey method was adopted. Questionnaires were interviewed one to one with service providers (barbers) and customers at the same time. Moreover, SPSS was used to as the statistical tool for analyzing results of the respondents. Sample of 400 respondents was taken and was analyzed using correlation and regression techniques. Managerial implication of this research is that it would help and assist service providers and managers to deeply and succinctly understand the desires of the customers in a best way. Furthermore, if employees will understand the emotions and needs of customers then surely customers will be satisfied and they will post-encounter the service. Some limitations to this research are that, it had only focused the context of Pakistan, and Karachi in particular. So there lies a gap in which this research could be done in some other context as well. Moreover, the tool used in this research is SPSS V.18, for future researchers' floor is open to conduct a research and use some other updated statistical tool to ensure the accuracy and persistence of these research findings.