Synthesis of Decision Making: From Data to Business Execution

The objective of this case study is to illustrate how text mining of open-ended responses and sentimental expressions (positive or negative) from student survey could yield valuable information for improving student experience management (SEM). The concept of student SEM was borrowed from the notion of customer experience management (CEM), which aims for ongoing improvement of customer relations through understanding of the customer's point of view. With the advance of text mining technology, which is based upon artificial intelligence and machine learning, textual data that were previously underutilized are found to be valuable in CEM. To illustrate how text mining can be applied to SEM, the authors discuss an example from a campus-wide survey conducted at Arizona State University. The purpose of this survey was to better understand student experiences with instructional technology in order for administrators to make data-driven decisions on its implementation. Rather than imposing the researchers' preconceived suppositions on the students by using force-option survey items, researchers on this project chose to use open-ended questions in order to elicit a free emergence of themes from the students. The most valuable lesson learned from this study is that students perceive an ideal environment as a web of mutually supporting systems. Specifically, online access should be augmented by use of laptops and availability of course materials, whereas virtual classes should be balanced by human interactions.

In service settings, customer satisfaction is often influenced by the quality of the interpersonal interaction between the customer and the contact employee. Previous research has identified the sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction in service encounters from the customer's point of view; this study explores these sources in service encounters from the contact employee's point of view. Drawing on insights from role, script, and attribution theories, 774 critical service encounters reported by employees of the hotel, restaurant, and airline industries are analyzed and compared with previous research. Results generally support the theoretical predictions and also identify an additional source of customer dissatisfaction—the customer's own misbehavior. The findings have implications for business practice in managing service encounters, employee empowerment and training, and managing customers.

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.

A major obstacle in the realm of digital business is striking a balance between automation and human interaction. CRM systems, business intelligence, and machine learning (ML) are some digital tools that can help scale marketing operations. However, they can also result in bad service and impersonal, misdirected communications. It's not at all an abstract issue. Companies that over-automate procedures and depend too much on technology run the danger of failing. Customers' most valuable experience—feeling valued and respected—virtually vanishes. It should come as no surprise that the accumulation of negative experiences—from pointless emails to being unable to get in touch with someone when needed—erodes consumer loyalty, drives away clients, and destroys revenue. How might an automated system help an organization keep its human touch? In what ways may technology be utilized to make a positive impact on customers? Even though it would be easy to see these two ideas as antagonistic, they work well together.

Primary objective: To evaluate the effects of different trainer–trainee interaction patterns on the self-efficacy outcomes of trainees with brain injury.Research design: A pre-test and post-test randomized clinical trial design.Methods and procedures: One hundred and three subjects with brain injury were recruited and 83 subjects participated in analogical problem-solving training that was delivered in three respective interaction modes: (a) direct trainer–trainee interaction, (b) self-paced computer-assisted and (c) on-line training with real-time audio-visual interaction. Quizzes on daily behavioural problem- solving and a problem-solving self-efficacy rating scale were adopted as outcome measures. The trainees in the trainer-administered group that received instructions in person with a continuous ‘human touch’ showed more significant improvement in their problem-solving self-efficacy than the two other groups.Conclusions: Interactive modes of cognitive skill training can be flexible enough to match the needs of individual trainees. However, human interaction is considered important in promoting self-efficacy in trainees with brain injury.

Data play an important role in water-related research. Based on experiences in data collection and data processing in water-related research this paper proposes – both from a computer scientist's and an environmental engineer's point of view – a set of rules for data handling: Rule 1: Protect raw data; Rule 2: Save metadata; Rule 3: Use databases; Rule 4: Separate data from processing; Rule 5: Use programming; Rule 6: Avoid redundancy; Rule 7: Be transparent; Rule 8: Use standards and naming conventions. Applying these rules (i) increases the quality of data and results, (ii) allows to prepare data for long-term usage and make data accessible to different people, (iii) makes data processing transparent and results reproducible, and (iv) saves – at least in the long run – time and effort. With this contribution the authors would like to start a discussion about best data handling practices and present a first checklist of data handling and data processing for practitioners and researchers working in the water sector.

266 Background: An oral chemotherapy safety event prompted analysis of related workflows utilizing lean quality improvement methodology. This analysis identified high variation in prescription processing, lack of standardized safety checks, inefficient use of pharmacy time, and inadequate data collection. Our goal was to create an oral chemotherapy protocol that could ensure patients have the right oral chemotherapy agent, at the right dose, at the right time, with independent and efficient safety checks by nursing, pharmacy, and providers. Methods: Multidisciplinary teams participated in two kaizen workshops. utilizing lean methodology. Primary workshop objectives were (1) develop safety standards for oral chemotherapy similar to those for intravenous chemotherapy; (2) make workflows more efficient; and (3) have workflows that enable data collection and process control. The first workshop standardized oral chemotherapy prescription processing though a single workflow in the EMR. This enabled robust data collection and established a platform for safety interventions. The second workshop developed standardized safety checks for and integrated those into the EMR workflow. Given the rarity of serious safety events, a validation measurement was not feasible to track in 30-day PDCA cycles. Consequently, surrogate measures of utilization of the EMR prescribing algorithm and reduction of non-clinical pharmacy interventions were used to assess progress. Safety data were collected and correlated to surrogate outcomes for long-term impact assessment. Results: Interventions resulted in the following outcomes: 100% reduction in oral chemotherapy order defects reaching pharmacy; 97% improvement processing oral chemotherapy though a single EMR workflow; 23% reduction in oral chemotherapy processing time; In spite of a 51% increase in oral chemotherapy volume, no serious safety events have occurred in the last year. Conclusions: Comprehensive quality improvement in our oral chemotherapy process increased safety and efficiency while developing data collection systems for continuous improvement. Multidisciplinary workshops with key stakeholders using established lean methodology were critical to success.

Understanding music streaming services via text mining of online customer reviews

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 emergence of artificial intelligence has been a start of new era in the age of technology. The business world mostly relies on satisfying customer needs, with the introduction of artificial intelligence the task of marketer to satisfy customer has been made much simpler. The use of artificial intelligence has added a lot of value to the customers while purchasing, which has added to an overall increase in customer experience. Decision making is one of the most difficult tasks from the customer's point of view; when it comes to choosing a product, the use of artificial intelligence has been very fruitful in helping the customer in making decisions. The chapter tries to show how the use of artificial intelligence has changed the way of doing business. The chapter concludes with the future scope of artificial intelligence in the field of management and its application.

Análisis de los procesos de recuperación del servicio en el sector de telefonía móvil

Defining and managing customer requirements is becoming increasingly important in product development. Many software organizations are interested in improving their requirements engineering processes, but they do not know how and where to begin. This report describes the experiences of two Finnish organizations that have started to develop their requirements practices systematically. To guide these development activities, software process improvement procedures and guidelines published in the literature were adjusted and applied. The most important lesson learned was that introducing requirements engineering can require a change of culture and not merely a change of process and technology. The change of culture firstly requires that product development personnel fully understand the reasons for documenting requirements from a customer's point of view. Secondly, they must commit to defining and managing customer requirements systematically.

Various aspects of transmission quality in evolving telephone services are reviewed and summarized from the customer's point of view. The evolution of the public switched telephone network is described. Quality specification methodology is examined, covering transmission standards, the room environment, and quality measures. Transmission quality in mixed analog and digital operation and in advanced telephone services are considered. Future telephone services are discussed. >

HE European Airspace is becoming more and more congested as traffic is forecast to grow steadily over the next 20 years and beyond. To meet the challenge of sustainable growth of Air Transport Management in Europe, an Advisory Council for Aeronautics Research in Europe (ACARE) was launched in June 2001. ACARE's main focus is to establish and carry forward a Strategic Research Agenda (SRA 1/2) that will influence all European stakeholders in the planning of research programs, particularly national and EU programs, in line with the Vision 2020 and the goals it identifies. Among these programs, SESAR (Single European Sky ATM Research) and its various phases (from Definition to Development and ultimately Deployment) has the ambition to face the lack of commitment from a part of the Stakeholders or from deciders in previous initiatives. The Definition Phase, jointly funded by EUROCONTROL and the European Commission, will deliver a European ATM Master Plan based on future aviation requirements, and will identify the actions needed to achieve the objectives of SESAR. At the European level, other programs are strongly linked with SESAR, including the Joint Technology Initiatives (JTI) a new instrument provided by the European Seventh Framework Programme, to support research of long duration. One of those initiatives, called CLEAN SKY, will create various technology demonstrators, including flight test vehicles that will be essential for successful market introduction. Research into the future of the air transportation system critically depends upon the ability to evaluate the effects of the revolutionary candidate concepts across the entire air transportation system. The testing of these concepts through modeling and simulation can provide useful information on improvements on system capacity/safety and related environmental impact. In this evolutionary European context, the French Aerospace Laboratory (ONERA) is carrying out an ambitious program (IESTA) to design a modeling and simulation infrastructure able of evaluating innovative air transport concepts. This platform has to be considered as a mean to help harmonization of panEuropean assessment tools for innovative research on future Air Transport Systems (ATS). This paper firstly introduces organizational issues of the IESTA Program focusing on expected benefits of the underlying approach from the customer's point of view. We then discuss system architectural issues of the platform as well as technological features. Finally, we give a detailed presentation of a rapid prototype of the first version

Abstract