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  • Harvard Business Review

Fighting Bias on the Front Lines

By: Alexandra C. Feldberg and Tami Kim
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Abstract

Most companies aim for exceptional customer service, but too few are attentive to the subtle discrimination by frontline employees that can alienate customers, lead to lawsuits, or even cause lasting brand damage by going viral.
This article presents research about the way bias occurs in the provision of core products and services (“exchanges”), the furnishing of help that exceeds the minimum required (“extras”), and the manner in which service is delivered (“etiquette”). By breaking customer service into these three dimensions, the authors offer a framework for identifying and addressing frontline bias in your own organization. They recommend talking to your customers, examining available data, and running experiments to get a better sense of what biases exist among your customer service workers. Armed with that information, you might try to mitigate prejudiced behavior by broadening employees’ exposure to people of diverse backgrounds, giving them standard procedures to follow when they interact with customers, and encouraging a sense of responsibility to act fairly.

Keywords

Customer Service; Customer Focus and Relationships; Service Delivery; Diversity; Prejudice and Bias; Organizational Change and Adaptation

Citation

Feldberg, Alexandra C., and Tami Kim. "Fighting Bias on the Front Lines." Harvard Business Review 99, no. 6 (November–December 2021): 90–98.
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About The Author

Alexandra C. Feldberg

Organizational Behavior
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    Moleskine Foundation: Can Creativity Change the World?

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    Calculators for Women: When Identity-Based Appeals Backfire

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    The Task Bind: Explaining Gender Differences in Managerial Tasks and Performance

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More from the Authors
  • Moleskine Foundation: Can Creativity Change the World? By: Ryan Raffaelli, Alexandra C. Feldberg and Sarah Gulick
  • Calculators for Women: When Identity-Based Appeals Backfire By: Tami Kim, Kate Barasz, Michael I. Norton and Leslie K. John
  • The Task Bind: Explaining Gender Differences in Managerial Tasks and Performance By: Alexandra C. Feldberg
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