Professionals’ interpersonal communications style: does it matter in building client psychological comfort?

Abstract

Purpose The inherent characteristics of professional services (i.e. high in credence properties, customized and featuring information asymmetry) often cause difficulties for clients to confidently evaluate technical outcomes before, during or even after service delivery. This results in considerable client psychological discomfort. This study aims to blend a revised social interaction model and uncertainty reduction theory to investigate the role that service provider’s interpersonal communication style plays in establishing client psychological comfort and satisfaction in a health-care context. Design/methodology/approach The study draws on cross-sectional data collected from 355 hospital patients following visiting a physician plus an experimental design in an Eastern culture (Thailand). Findings The study reveals three key findings. First, an affiliative communication style is positively associated with psychological comfort, but not so a dominant communications style. When both styles are presented, the high-affiliative style overshadows the low-dominant style and creates the highest psychological comfort. Second, clients’ perceptions of professional’s affiliative and dominant styles influence psychological comfort differentially under varying conditions of clients’ cognitive social capital, collectivist value-orientation but not service criticality. Third, a competing model suggests psychological comfort acts as a partial mediator between affiliative communication style and satisfaction. Research limitations/implications To generalize the findings, further studies might be conducted in other professional services and in individualist Western cultures. Practical implications The findings have important managerial implications for the appropriate use of communication style to build psychological comfort and engage clients of professional services firms. Social implications The findings shed light on the important role of an everyday social function – interpersonal communications and how this impacts client psychological comfort and satisfaction. Originality/value This is one of the few studies in a services context that examines the impact of professionals’ communications style. Moreover, it examines the impact of cultural value-orientation, cognitive social capital, service criticality in moderating the communications style – client psychological comfort relationship.