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The UK Government’s Best Value initiative is intended to ensure that local authorities provide best value in service delivery and emphasises the importance of ensuring a clear customer/citizen focus across all services. Local authorities are already using a variety of methods to capture the voice of the customer, with customer surveys being one of the most popular. Such surveys, however, have tended to focus solely on customers’ perceptions of services and not their expectations. This paper presents the results of using an adapted SERVQUAL approach across a range of Scottish council services. The results of the studies will be discussed, the use of SERVQUAL results by service managers reviewed and the contribution of SERVQUAL to continuous improvement assessed.
The aim of this study is to examine factors related to employee engagement in frontline jobs in service firms.
A conceptual model was developed and tested on a survey in which 279 hospitality frontline employees participated.
The findings show that employee engagement is closely linked to employees' innovative behaviour. Accordingly, the study clearly reveals the value of having an engaged frontline workforce. Moreover, the results show that perceptions of role benefit, job autonomy, and strategic attention were all significantly related to greater employee engagement.
This study limits its examination to the antecedents and effects of employee engagement for two types of service organizations.
The study has demonstrated the importance for managers of having an engaged workforce. In particular, it is important for managers to notice that engagement is a major driver to innovative behaviour. Consequently, one general and key practical implication from this study is the importance for mangers to measure regularly the engagement of their workforce.
This paper enhances one's knowledge of factors linked to employee engagement.
This paper aims to describe the development and evaluation of a process model to transform brand strategy into service experiences during the front end of new service development (NSD). This is an important yet poorly understood transformation that occurs early in service development projects. The paper also aims to describe the theoretical basis for this transformation, and introduces a process model that has been developed to understand and assist with this. Further, it seeks to describe early evaluation results and reflections upon its use.
A research through design approach using participatory co‐design led to the development of the new process. The development was iterative and carried out together with three service providers. The process model was evaluated using a combination of qualitative methods, including interviews, observation and participatory observation.
This work underlines the importance of aligning the customer experience to the company brand and suggests how this can be achieved. A key element in this is the development of a service personality and consideration of service touch‐point behaviours through a combination of analytical work and experience prototyping. The suggested process model has received positive evaluation when used in commercial projects, in terms of brand congruence, project team cohesiveness and experiential result. The work advocates tighter integration between brand management and NSD, and has identified multiple issues regarding the content of a service brand strategy. These include the ways in which a brand department should communicate its brand strategy, and how it should be involved in NSD projects to ensure brand alignment.
The evaluation of the model has limitations, both in terms of number of cases and downstream/long term effects. This should therefore be considered an initial evaluation of the model, requiring further verification.
The paper describes a structured three‐stage experience‐centric process that improves brand alignment in projects. Further, the work shows that brand specifications for services should increasingly focus upon desired customer experiences, service touch‐points and touch‐point behaviours rather than the current focus upon visual identity.
This is the first paper to suggest a process that transforms a brand strategy into customer experiences during NSD. It also adds original insights into the transition from brand to concept, bridging branding, service design and NSD.
Discusses the importance of leadership behaviours in understanding service quality and organizational performance. After an overview of the relevant issues, presents some research results based on a study of 65 managers in an airline services organization. Overall, direct report ratings of their managers’ leadership behaviours were significantly related to indicators of service quality (including customer satisfaction and damages) and business unit performance (based on profitability and turnover) to varying degrees depending on the content of the practices.
– The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of service quality (interaction, physical environment, and outcome quality) on trust, to investigate the trust transfer in the healthcare industry, to explore the moderating effects of image congruence and switching costs on the trust transfer, and to assess the effect of trust on patients’ willingness of recommendation.
– The research model was tested using data collected from 483 inpatients in 15 medium-to-large hospitals in Taiwan. Structure equation modeling with the latent interaction effect was employed to verify and validate the research model.
– The outcomes show that interaction quality and outcome quality positively influence patients’ trust in the original hospital. But the effect of environment quality on trust is not significant. Patients’ trust in the original hospital positively affects their trust in its allied hospitals. Furthermore, image congruence positively moderates the trust transfer. However, switching costs do not appear to moderate the trust transfer. The results also confirm that trust in the original hospital and its allied hospitals positively affect patients’ willingness to recommend allied hospitals.
– Due to the chosen research approach, the 15 hospitals cannot represent all hospitals in Taiwan and the research outcomes may lack generalizability.
– The research results provide insight into how a hospital can improve and manage patients’ trust and the trust transfer.
– This study represents one of the few that empirically investigates trust and trust transfer in the healthcare industry and examines the moderating effects of image congruence and switching costs on the trust transfer.
Begins by defining the conversion model ‐ a model used as a marketing tool to identify commitment to different brands of goods or services. Argues that there is a difference between committed and uncommitted customers which is not related to service quality and that this makes it difficult to predict customer retention based solely on these grounds. Other factors also drive commitment. Presents two short case studies based on these assumptions.
Some organisations are becoming more concerned with delighting their customers than simply satisfying them. Yet despite an extensive literature on service quality and satisfaction little has been written about service excellence and how organisations can achieve delighted customers. The purpose of this exploratory but empirically based paper is to provide a definition of service excellence to help marketers and managers, where appropriate, design and deliver it. This paper is based on over 400 statements of excellent and poor service gathered from around 150 respondents. After categorising them, using a grounded theory approach, it is suggested that service excellence is about being “easy to do business with”. This has four key elements: delivering the promise, providing a personal touch, going the extra mile and resolving problems well. Further analysis of the frequencies of mention revealed the overarching importance of dealing well with problems and queries.
The purpose of this article is to investigate the path service quality → customer satisfaction → loyalty, at the level of constructs, drawing from the Greek insurance industry.
A SERVQUAL type service‐quality instrument is developed for Greek insurance. Confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses are used to determine the scale's dimensionality. Path analysis is utilized to examine a model linking service quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty at the level of constructs' individual determinants.
SERVQUAL's dimensionality is not confirmed. A non‐tangibles, tangibles structure exists in Greek insurance. “Tangibles” does not affect customer satisfaction while WOM is an antecedent of repurchasing intentions. Satisfaction does not directly influence the latter.
This study suffers the limitation that it tests the fit of the model within the limits of a single service industry. Another limitation is availability sampling. However, the satisfactory fit of the estimated model allows for the study to be a reliable comparison basis for future research.
Insurance managers may use GIQUAL for measuring the quality of insurance services offered. They must improve the intangible rather than the tangible elements of service and direct their support mechanisms towards developing customers willing to engage in positive WOM. The proposed model can be used to provide comparable findings across sectors, countries and time provided that, in each case, an appropriately customized SERVQUAL type scale is used.
This study explores the service quality, satisfaction, and loyalty path at the level of specific dimensions drawing from Greek insurance.
Explains how CIGNA set out to improve the image of its product provision and customer service. Outlines the historical background and the decision. Describes how the company went about gaining a clear understanding of customer requirements by conducting surveys. Goes on to explain how this information was translated into quality service provision.