Critical Service Encounters: The Employee's Viewpoint

The service encounter frequently is the service from the customer's point of view. Using the critical incident method, the authors collected 700 incidents from customers of airlines, hotels, and restaurants. The incidents were categorized to isolate the particular events and related behaviors of contact employees that cause customers to distinguish very satisfactory service encounters from very dissatisfactory ones. Key implications for managers and researchers are highlighted.

The service encounter frequently is the service from the customer's point of view. Using the critical incident method, the authors collected 700 incidents from customers of airlines, hotels, and re...

Innovations in services often emanate from service encounters (i.e. the touch points between the service producers and the customers). Two different types of service encounters are dealt with: face-to-face and ICT-based service encounters. The aim of the chapter is to examine the specific conditions for innovations from ICT-based service encounters. The service encounter research tradition is mostly concerned with customer satisfaction. The perspective of the present chapter is on innovations in the service encounter. The specific contribution of the chapter is to establish a conceptual foundation for innovations in ICT-based service encounters.

Very little research has been done looking at the effects of salespeople’s actions on customer satisfaction with salespeople, their companies, and service encounters. This paper reports results of a role-playing experiment involving 272 individuals that was undertaken to examine these issues. Results indicate several important findings. First, services failure attributed to factors outside the control of salespeople did not affect customer satisfaction with salespeople. However, failures attributed to salespeople’s actions did have a negative effect on customer satisfaction with both salespeople and their companies. Salespeople offering customers compensation for service failure had no effect on customer satisfaction with the salespeople. Customer compensation did have a positive effect on satisfaction with the service encounter and the company. Implications are discussed.

Effect of experiential value on customer satisfaction with service encounters in luxury-hotel restaurants

This article focuses on low-income consumers facing social stigma in service encounters with contact employees. Research have regarded the income-consumers from the disadvantaged perspective but few from the stigmatized perspective. The literature tends to propose direct functional relationships between emotions and coping processes. Further studies suggested that emotional and cognitive appraisals interact to influence consumers' choice of coping strategies. Our study was designed using Critical Incident Technique and Content Analysis in 210 low income individuals. The results state the existence of that stigmatized behavior beyond the legitimate expected interaction between the parties involved. The construction of the stigma model evolution illustrated this research.

The article aims to better understand the impact of intercultural communication and personality on customer satisfaction and word of mouth and intention to revisit and to pay more in coffee stores in Cambodia. In this endeavour, the study illustrates the unique context of intercultural communication to highlight several improvements and to encourage the advancement of intercultural communication in the hospitality and tourism literature in Cambodia. Based on the established theories, the study assesses the role of customers’ personality on intercultural communication competence and perceived cultural distance and its impact on interrole congruence and interaction comfort empirically. The research assists in strengthening communication strategies, which is required intercultural communication adjustments in multicultural hospitality business environment. The intercultural communication is expected to improve the tourism industry competitiveness when it positively influences interrole congruence and interaction comfort among service encounters in the industry. To initiate the research, data was gathered by questionnaires within selected coffee stores in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The measurement of the constructs and their interrelationships were examined based on partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The proposed framework provides partly statistically significant relationships among the constructs. Furthermore, the study reveals additional insights into some managerial and theoretical solutions for addressing the intercultural communication of service encounters in the Cambodian hospitality industry. These contributions will postulate an impetus for future research in various service settings.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the methods used by marketers over the past years to develop loyalty among customers. Furthermore, the paper considers the shortcomings of these methods and certain societal and technological changes that have further impacted on the potential effectiveness of these methods in the future.Design/methodology/approachThe author uses his experience working with hundreds of marketers around the world developing, managing, analyzing, measuring and improving customer loyalty strategies and tactics. The author combines these experiences with analysis of certain dynamics in the marketplace that have changed the way marketers must interact with customers. Finally, the author has combined this experience and analysis to formulate a point of view about the impact on marketing strategies in the future.FindingsMany of the past efforts used by marketers to develop customer loyalty have been ineffective because they have been based on tactics used in the airline industry. These shortcomings will become greater in the future unless marketers change their ways. Corporate scandals have eroded the trust that customers have in marketers and, therefore, marketing efforts must be more genuine and easily understood or customers will react skeptically. Concerns about privacy and identity theft have heightened concerns among customers and made them more wary and, therefore, less willing to openly share information and engage in a relationship with a brand unless there appear to be genuine value and behavior by the company that engender trust and faith.Practical implicationsMarketers must step back and make absolutely certain that their efforts are based on customer needs and desires and do more to enhance customer trust than to erode it. Marketing strategies and programs must be believable. One of the most important components of customer relationships moving forward will be the development of trust that further enhances the customers' willingness to interact with certain brands and companies.Originality/valueThere is a great deal of talk in the marketplace about customer relationships. This paper seeks to bring the dialogue down to earth and incorporate the customer's point of view rather than just the theoretical marketing point of view. This paper suggests that marketers should work harder and work smarter to be sure that their programs are worthwhile to customers.

The aim of this research is to analyze the effect of total quality management with 4 indicators, namely customer satisfaction, employee empowerment, continuous quality improvement, and management based on facts on operational performance at the Putra Bali Rattan Furniture Industry in Mayang District, Jember Regency. This research is research using a combination approach (mix methods). A sample of 65 respondents was obtained using a saturated sampling technique. Data was obtained using questionnaires and interviews with the owner and 5 consumers and then analyzed using regression analysis. In processing research data, researchers used the SPSS version 22 application. The research results show that 3 of the 4 X variables, namely customer satisfaction, employee empowerment, and continuous quality improvement have a positive and significant effect on operational performance. Meanwhile management variables based on facts have a negative effect on operational performance. The positive influence of the customer satisfaction variable is also supported by the results of interviews which state that the company has implemented 4 indicators of customer satisfaction and in line with this, operational performance has also increased. In conclusion, customer satisfaction, employee empowerment, and continuous quality improvement have a positive and significant effect on operational performance, while management based on facts has a negative effect. Keywords: Customer Satisfaction, Employee Empowerment, Management Based on Facts, Operational Performance , Quality Improvement Sustainable

Understanding music streaming services via text mining of online customer reviews

This paper refers to an important discussion of effects of culture on customer satisfaction keeping in view the service encounters. For many researchers and marketers, customer satisfaction has become a critical success factor and carries an important aspect of business process. Culture is believed to be an important social influence which has significant impact on consumers and the way they behave. Authors assert that culture is a prominent part of social interactions while customers’ involvement with others in business. Customers shape up their perception on service quality primarily during the service encounters because of embedded features of services as intangible and inseparable. Using the content analysis technique and view of literature, Geert Hofstede’s Model for cultural differences offers a practical roadmap. However, for a firm operation in cross cultural environment, a deep down further analysis of other local cultural dimensions are helpful for better customer interaction. Today’s service firms should be aware of the importance of adapting services to the new culture, while maintaining the core service quality standard. Especially for high intangible and high contact services, good employee-customer interactions are key, and a better understanding of how to adapt service delivery behavior to the values of major cultural groups are highly beneficial to service firms.

Employee empowerment is said to benefit all organisations. The fast moving global economy requires that organisations learn and adapt to change quickly, and employees have a key role to play here. This is particularly true in modern service organisations. The empowered employee is said to respond more quickly to customer service requests, act to rectify complaints and be more engaged in service encounters. A more reflective approach suggests there are different managerial perceptions of empowerment, resulting in empowerment being introduced in different service organisations in different ways, and presenting different benefits to managers and working experiences for the empowered. This paper suggests that a framework of analysis needs to be developed which goes beyond the more simplistic claims which tend to discuss empowerment as that which is labelled empowerment. The success or failure of an initiative which claims to be empowering will be determined by the experience of being empowered.

Drawing on service climate theory, this study examined the mediating effect of service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior on the relationship between service climate and customer satisfaction, and the moderating effects of three potential factors for service core attributes (customer contact frequency, service intangibility, and service employee interdependence) on service climate-customer satisfaction link. The research objective in this study is banking service industry in Taiwan. Sample data from 40 branches will be collected from employees, customers, and their supervisors. In this study constructs with three sources (e.g., customers rated customer satisfaction, and contact employees rated their perceived service climate, and service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior in individual level, while their supervisor rated service attributes in work unit level) will be measured in order to reduce the possibility of same source bias. Confirmatory factor analysis, reliability, correlation and regression analyses and hierarchical linear modeling were conducted to test research hypotheses. The results showed that (1) a positive, direct relationship is expected between frontline contact employees’ perceptions of climate for service and customer satisfaction; (2) service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior of employee does not mediate the relationship of service climate on customer satisfaction; (3) service employee interdependence moderates the relationship between service climate and customer satisfaction, this relationship will be significantly stronger when service intangibility is high.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of complaint satisfaction, specifically to examine how contact employees should behave and which qualities they should possess. The study also aims to explore the comparability of results obtained from two laddering methods, as the alternative techniques may lead to different sets of attributes.Design/methodology/approachAn exploratory study using the means‐end approach and two laddering techniques (personal interviews and questionnaires) was conducted.FindingsWhile the personal interviews produced more depth in understanding, the results of the two laddering methods are broadly similar. The research indicates that being taken seriously in the complaint encounter and the employee's listening skills and competence are particularly important.Research limitations/implicationsOwing to the exploratory nature of the study and the scope and size of its student sample, the results outlined are tentative in nature.Practical implicationsIf companies know what customers expect, contact employees may be trained to adapt their behavior to their customers' underlying expectations, which should have a positive impact on customer satisfaction. For this purpose, the paper gives suggestions to managers to improve active complaint management.Originality/valueThe study was the first to successfully apply the means‐end approach and two laddering techniques to the issue of complaint satisfaction. The paper has hopefully opened up an area of research and methodology that could reap considerable further benefits for researchers interested in the area of customer complaint satisfaction.

Purpose -The purpose of our study is to analyze the customer satisfaction and loyalty in restaurant industry in Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.Considering the restaurant industry, the literature reveals that food quality, service quality, price, location and restaurant atmosphere are the key determinants of customer satisfaction.Although positive relationships were reported in many studies between the traditional determinants and customer satisfaction, it is important to investigate these factors in TRNC since the dynamics and culture of each country can be different.Design/methodology/approach -In this study, 7-point Likert scale survey instrument was constructed and online questionnaire distributed to survey 356 customers through convenience sampling method.Classification and Regression Tree (CART) Analysis was used to test the hypotheses.Findings -Our findings indicate that service quality and food quality make significant contribution on customer satisfaction and there is a positive relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.In addition, food quality is the most important factor influencing the customer satisfaction in restaurant industry.Discussion -In addition to traditional determinants, usage of mobile application and presentation shows in restaurants were incorporated into the proposed research model to examine the relationship with customer satisfaction.Mobile application and presentation shows were rarely investigated in restaurant industry and since there is a hyper-competition in restaurant industry, it is important to find new ways that can promote to customer satisfaction.Furthermore, the relationships between customer satisfaction and loyalty is investigated.