How bank branches affect customer service quality perceptions.

The Australian banking industry has changed significantly with the introduction of electronic banking technology. This has led to a situation where facilities such as ATM machines and Internet Banking have become increasingly important in the service delivery process. Traditionally, there has been relatively little research into the role facilities play in service satisfaction. There is also little literature about how customers interact with service facilities. This has left banks grappling with facility design and planning issues. This article examines how Australian bank customers interact with local banking facilities by investigating five aspects of the service facility: Access, Atmospherics, Waiting Time, Technology, and Security. Findings suggest that facilities have a significant impact on customer satisfaction levels. Convenient and easy access, security, and a comfortable level of technology were identified by customers as the most important factors influencing their satisfaction levels.

Business analytics and competitive advantage : a review and a research agenda

Business analytics has the potential to deliver performance gains and competitive advantage. However, a theoretically grounded model identifying the factors and processes involved in realizing those performance gains has not been clearly articulated in the literature. This paper draws on the literature on dynamic capabilities to develop such a theoretical framework. It identifies the critical roles of organizational routines and organization-wide capabilities for identifying, resourcing and implementing business analytics-based competitive actions in delivering performance gains and competitive advantage. A theoretical framework and propositions for future research are developed.

Who chose this restaurant anyway? The effect of responsibility for choice, guarantees and failure stability on customer complaining

Customers often behave in the context of a group, with different behavior occurring in this context to that which transpires in an individual context. However, customer complaining behavior (CCB), including voice, negative word of mouth, in addition to that transmitted electronically, and exit, in a group setting has not been studied previously. A service failure during a group celebration at a restaurant and the pattern of CCB that ensues is examined. This is based on customers’ level of responsibility in restaurant selection on behalf of the group, the presence of an unconditional service guarantee, and the perceived stability of the failure. Findings suggest that customers are more inclined to exit when they have participated to a greater degree in choice and that the presence of an unconditional guarantee interacts with participation to influence negative word of mouth intentions. Perceived failure stability had the greatest influence on CCB.

A fuzzy decision support method for customer preferences analysis based on Choquet integral

The explosion of the Web 2:0 platforms, with massive volume of user generated data, has presented many new opportunities as well as challenges for organizations in understanding consumer's behavior to support for business planning process. Feature based sentiment mining has been an emerging area in providing tools for automated opinion discovery and summarization to help business managers with achieving such goals. However, the current feature based sentiment mining systems were only able to provide some forms of sentiments summary with respect to product features, but impossible to provide insight into the decision making process of consumers. In this paper, we will present a relatively new decision support method based on Choquet Integral aggregation function, Shapley value and Interaction Index which is able to address such requirements of business managers. Using a study case of Hotel industry, we will demonstrate how this technique can be applied to effectively model the user's preference of (hotel) features. The presented method has potential to extend the practical capability of sentiment mining area, while, research findings and analysis are useful in helping business managers to define new target customers and to plan more effective marketing strategies.

Measuring customer satisfaction in tourist service encounters

This paper sets out to model quality and satisfaction judgements of college students within four distinct tourist encounters. A novel approach is used where respondents rated an entire service setting by proxy when evaluating a picture in which certain quality variables had been manipulated. Each picture contained separate ôobjectsö of the service that we claim would be evaluated on a cognitive plane along different dimensions for the relevant attributes of each encounter. The scores were then used to develop regression models to estimate the influence of distinct quality factors on overall satisfaction

The impact of strategy on business analytics success

Business analytics systems are an important strategic investment for many organisations and can potentially contribute significantly to firm performance. In this paper we develop a theoretical model, based on the resource-based view, that explains how business analytics capabilities lead to benefits. We argue that the type of strategy, represented as enterprise architecture, moderates the benefits achieved. Two case studies are then presented, each with a different type of strategy, and we explain how and why benefits were achieved from business analytics systems in each. We then identify the similarities and differences between the two case studies and discuss these using five dimensions that emerge from the case studies: strategic alignment, governance, people, organizational culture and data and technology infrastructure.

Towards a business analytics capability maturity model

Business analytics (BA) systems are an important strategic investment for many organisations and can potentially contribute significantly to firm performance. Establishing strong BA capabilities is currently one of the major concerns of chief information officers. This research project aims to develop a BA capability maturity model (BACMM). The BACMM will help organisations to scope and evaluate their BA initiatives. This research-in-progress paper describes the current BACMM, relates it to existing capability maturity models and explains its theoretical base. It also discusses the design science research approach being used to develop the BACMM and provides details of further work within the research project. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of how the BACMM might be used in practice.

Becoming an analytics-based organisation : strategic agency in the change process in a retail organisation

The paper examines how the upward and downward strategic influences of the head of the BI unit in the case organization have evolved over time and the BI perspective became legitimate in the organization. The analysis covers a decade long period of time. We engaged in an Action Research (AR) inquiry where the change process was explored through the first-hand experiences of one of the co-authors. The model of the strategic agency of middle managers was applied in the analysis. We analyse the evolution as well as the enablers and constraints of the strategic agency of the head of the BI unit in the case organisation and identify the type of strategic agency exhibited in the case.

Modelling engineering student academic performance using academic analytics

Internationally, the recruitment, management and retention of students has become a high priority for universities. The use of information technology systems and student data by institutions to understand and improve student academic performance is often referred to as ‘academic analytics’. This paper presents an academic analytics investigation into the modelling of academic performance of engineering students enrolled in a second-year class. The modelling method used was binary logistic regression, and the target predicted variable was ‘success status’—defined as those students from the total originally enrolled group that achieved a final unit grade of pass or better. This paper shows that student data stored in institutional systems can be used to predict student academic performance with reasonable accuracy, and it provides one methodology for achieving this. Importantly, significant predictor variables are identified that offer the ability to develop targeted interventions to improve student success and retention outcomes.

Developing customer-focused public sector rewards schemes : evidence from the Botswana government's performance based reward system (PBRS)

Purpose – Governmental agencies are interested in improving the quality of their service delivery. One tool that has been used to manage their performance is performance based reward schemes (PBRS). The aim of this paper is to examine the degree to which a sample of these plans, used within the Botswana public sector, is customer-focused. Being more customer-focused should deliver improved public sector service quality.

Design/methodology/approach – This study carried out an evaluation of a sample of Botswana PBRS plans, using multidimensional content analysis undertaken by four expert “evaluators”, to identify the degree to which the PBRS were customer-focused.

Findings – Classifying PBRS plans as being customer-focused was difficult, as the plans had few objectives related to customer experiences or outcomes. Those that did had poorly defined performance objectives, their targets were not specific, or there was limited explicit role responsibility. Thus, PBRS plans seemed not to focus on improving customer outcomes.

Research limitations/implications – The PBRS evaluated do not appear to be customer-focused and, thus, would have limited ability to improve customer experiences (i.e. public sector quality). Further research is needed in other countries to see whether these results are generalisable, and whether service levels vary with more customer-focused PBRS plans.

Practical implications – The results suggest improvements that could be adopted by organisations seeking to make their PBRS schemes customer-focused.

Originality/value – Extensive research suggests that PBRS plans can be used to improve service quality. Most of the studies have focused on the employees' perspectives and have not looked at the degree of customer orientation within the plans.