The behavior of employees in direct customer contact within service companies significantly influences customer expectations regarding the service and their perception of service quality. This necessitates a shift from isolated customer and consumer research to the analysis of the interaction between customers and employees. Alina Seidel examines how the formulation of requirement characteristics can operationalize employee communication behavior that aligns with the construct of customer orientation. Based on insights from communication psychology, she develops a catalog of criteria for determining customer-oriented communication and demonstrates specific incentive structures for customer contact employees in relation to customer-oriented communication through an empirical study. The author then concludes.