EMERGING TRENDS AND CONCLUSIONS:THE SERVICE ENCOUNTER

By -
THE SERVICE ENCOUNTER

Findings from the American Customer Satisfaction Index and other national indexes reveal that services are consistently the lowest-scoring sector on customer satisfaction, with public services scoring lowest (Anderson and Fornell 1994). In service organizations, customer satisfaction is often determined by the quality of individual encounters—the service encounter (Bitner 1990; Solomon et al. 1985). The service encounter has been defined as ‘‘a period of time during which a consumer directly interacts with a service’’ (Shostack 1985, p. 243). This definition emphasizes that the service encounter encompasses all elements of the interaction between consumer and service organization: the intangible as well as the tangible elements. Others, however, indicate that the service encounter is mainly conceived as interpersonal interaction between service provider and customer (Chase 1978; Solomon et al. 1985). Solomon et al. (1985, p. 100) define the service encounter as ‘‘the face-to- face encounter between a buyer and a seller in a service setting.’’ Although we acknowledge the importance of the personal elements in the service encounter, we feel that tangible elements need to be included in the service encounter (cf. Bitner 1990). For instance, the use of advanced technology and equipment may bestow a feeling of trust and a connotation of high quality on the customer.

The nature of the service encounter is succinctly depicted in Figure 1. Essentially, the service organization consists of two parts: a visible and an invisible part (Chase 1978; Langeard et al. 1981; Shostack 1985). The invisible part is concerned with all organizational processes in the service organization that support the visible part in delivering the service to the customer. The visible part consists of the tangible elements (Bitner 1990) and intangible elements—the customer-contact service employee.

The evaluation of the service encounter can be approached from several perspectives (Bateson 1985; Czepiel et al. 1985): (1) an organizational perspective, (2) a customer perspective, and (3) a customer-contact service employee perspective. The service organization is mainly interested in the performance of the customer-contact service employee because this perspective allows the service organization to attain its objectives. It is therefore essential for the service organization to identify organizational factors that affect the performance of service employees. The customer is mainly

SNAG-0358

interested in the service quality and customer satisfaction derived from the service encounter. If the evaluation of service quality and customer satisfaction is positive, the customer may decide to remain loyal to the service organization (Bateson 1985; Czepiel et al. 1985). The customer-contact service employee perspective is mainly concerned with the primary rewards of the service encounter, such as pay, promotion, job satisfaction, and recognition from the employee’s colleagues and supervisor. These primary rewards are mainly contingent on the employee’s performance in the service encounter. However, it should be noted that customer-contact personnel generally really care about the customer and are willing to exert the greatest possible effort to satisfy the customer’s needs (Schneider 1980; Schneider and Bowen 1985).

The marketing field has concentrated mainly on the service customer. The customer-contact ser- vice employee has been relatively neglected in marketing academia (cf. Hartline and Ferrell 1996). One notable exception is the conceptual model of service quality (Parasuraman et al. 1985), where perceived service quality is determined by four organizational gaps. This model was later extended by adding organizational control and communication processes (Zeithaml et al. 1988). In the next section, we will explore the definition of service quality, which is used as the basis for conceptual model of service quality.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MATERIAL-HANDLING SYSTEMS:STORAGE SYSTEMS

By -
Image
STORAGE SYSTEMS Various types of racks have been developed to store loads of different sizes and shapes. One of the simplest storage systems is block stacking, where loads (which may or may not be palletized) are simply stacked on top each other with no separate support structure. While block stacking is inex pensive and provides dense storage (i.e., little or no space is lost due to air between the loads), its use is limited in practice because only certain types of loads (such as appliances or furniture packed properly in cartons) can be stacked without crushing / damaging the loads at the bottom and access to individual loads (i.e., load selectivity) is very limited. In fact, loads must be removed from a stack, starting with the load at the top. This leads to last-in-first-out (LIFO) stock rotation, which is not desirable for many storage systems. A fundamental trade-off that exists in storage systems design is that between storage density (how well the cubic volume is utilized) ...
Read more

NETWORK OPTIMIZATION MODELS:THE MINIMUM SPANNING TREE PROBLEM

By -
Image
THE MINIMUM SPANNING TREE PROBLEM The minimum spanning tree problem bears some similarities to the main version of the shortest-path problem presented in the preceding section. In both cases, an undi r ecte d and connected network is being considered, where the given information includes some mea- sure of the positive length (distance, cost, time, etc.) associated with each link. Both problems also involve choosing a set of links that have the shortest total length among all sets of links that satisfy a certain property. For the shortest-path problem, this property is that the chosen links must provide a path between the origin and the destination. For the minimum spanning tree problem, the required property is that the chosen links must provide a path between ea c h pair of nodes. The minimum spanning tree problem can be summarized as follows: 1. You are given the nodes of a network but not the links. Instead, you are given the po- tential links and the positive length for each ...
Read more

DUALITY THEORY:THE ESSENCE OF DUALITY THEORY

By -
Image
THE ESSENCE OF DUALITY THEORY Given our standard form for the primal problem at the left (perhaps after conversion from another form), its dual problem has the form shown to the right. Thus, with the primal problem in maximizatio n form, the dual problem is in minimization form instead. Furthermore, the dual problem uses exactly the same pa r amete r s as the primal problem, but in different locations, as summarized below. 1. The coefficients in the objective function of the primal problem are the right-hand sides of the functional constraints in the dual problem. 2. The right-hand sides of the functional constraints in the primal problem are the coef- ficients in the objective function of the dual problem. 3. The coefficients of a variable in the functional constraints of the primal problem are the coefficients in a functional constraint of the dual problem. To highlight the comparison, now look at these same two problems in matrix notation (as introduced at the beginn...
Read more