Professor Gary Mortimer | When small businesses ‘bend the rules’

Is it ever appropriate for businesses to bend the rules to increase customer satisfaction? QUT's leading expert in retail, Professor Gary Mortimer, explores how the practice of customer-oriented deviance can lead to better outcomes all around.

Imagine receiving a "40% Off" promotional offer from your favourite local business. You arrive at the store, browse the racks, and excitedly locate a new coat. However, as you reach the checkout, you suddenly realise that the offer ended yesterday. Your experience reminds you that "rules are rules," it is pointless arguing, and if the promotion expired yesterday, it cannot be reactivated.

However, sensing your disappointment, the sales assistant immediately offers you the expired discount. Small businesses sometimes 'bend the rules' to assist their customers.

Breaking—or at least bending—the rules, policies or procedures to help a customer or client is referred to as 'customer-oriented deviance.'

While it is widely recognised that ‘customer-oriented deviance’ can lead to positive customer experiences, what motivates these frontline employees to deviate from a policy, and more importantly, what are the resulting outcomes of these practices?

This was the aim of research undertaken by Professor Gary Mortimer from the QUT Business School.

The research found that much of the motivation to 'bend the rules' stems from the employees' genuine need to 'help,' but also to improve operational efficiencies and reduce their own level of stress. Employees were motivated to bend the rules and engage to cut through bureaucratic red tape, speed up service and reduce costs. They also bent the rules to avoid arguments and aggressive customer behaviour.

Professor Mortimer’s recent research examined the key causes of increasing customer aggression.

These findings are great news for small businesses, as they grapple with an ever-changing business environment. Improving employee mental health is critical, while understanding how operational efficiencies can be attained by employees may lead to cost savings for small businesses.

In further research, Professor Mortimer wanted to understand what happens when employees are empowered to engage in customer-oriented deviance.

The research found that when employees are empowered to ‘bend the rules’ to help a customer, they experience higher levels of satisfaction with their own service skills, believing themselves to be more reliable, responsive and empathic. This, in turn, increased their commitment to their job, the business and led to reduced staff turnover.

Although customer-oriented deviance, by definition, conflicts with company policies and norms, enabling this behaviour may provide valuable outcomes for small businesses through improved service quality and a reduction in turnover.

A growing body of literature demonstrates that positive deviance can be used as a strategic tool for small businesses, which tend not to be constrained by national corporate policies, as many larger enterprises.

Professor Mortimer’s studies extend these ideas by examining the consequences of positive deviance when directed specifically to benefit the customer and employee.

QUT degree - Graduate Certificate in Academic Practice, 2012

Have a question for Professor Mortimer? Connect with him on LinkedIn.