Examining customer evaluations across different self-service technologies

Purpose – This study aims to examine the influence of different self-service technologies (SSTs) on customer satisfaction with and continued usage of SSTs. Specifically, it compares an interactive voice response (IVR) SST and an online SST from the same provider to assess how to manage these parallel SSTs.

Design/methodology/approach – A tracking study was used, beginning with a survey of n = 957 SST users to test a model pertaining to SST satisfaction across IVR and online SSTs. These SST users were then tracked over 12 months. The association between customer satisfaction with and continued usage of the SSTs was examined using behavioural data from the service provider.

Findings – While the overall model was found to be valid across both types of SSTs, perceptions of factors including ease of use, perceived control and reliability differed for IVR and online SSTs. Satisfaction with SSTs is linked with users’ continued use of SSTs, but is not a barrier to users’ adoption of newer SST forms.

Research limitations/implications – Highlighting the rapid developments in this field, a new SST was introduced by the provider to respondents during the 12-month tracking period, thus complicating the results. Further studies could include the customer purpose for using SSTs as a variable.

Practical implications – The findings offer support for organisations offering a suite of SSTs, even if they serve the same purpose. Customers evaluate SST types differently, and even satisfied SST users switch to different SSTs when they become available. Allowing customers to choose the SST that best suits them appears to be good practice.

Originality/value – This study develops a comprehensive model of customer SST satisfaction that is used to undertake a comparison of two different types of SSTs, which has been missing from prior research.

Business To Business (B2B) Service Processes: An Approach To Customer Complaint Process Evaluation Towards Service Excellence

Trabalho de Dissertação que identifica as decisões estratégicas relacionadas com a estrutura de gestão de serviços, no contexto de tratamento de reclamações. Os temas de recuperação de serviços e gestão de reclamações são discutidos e são listadas as melhores práticas com o objetivo de prover qualidade de serviço excelente. Este trabalho apresenta uma revisão da literatura sobre gestão de serviços e sua estratégia, e sobre valor aos clientes e sua satisfação. Qualidade de Serviço, Recuperação de Serviço e Gestão de Reclamações são revistos, também para contextualizar o processo de tratamento de reclamações de uma empresa do ramo industrial em ambiente de negócios entre empresas (business to business), cujos dados foram utilizados para construção do modelo de simulação de um processo de tratamento de reclamações. Os resultados desta simulação, junto com o suporte de um questionário sobre tratamento de reclamações, proveram pontos de reflexão e recomendações sobre desenho da estrutura de serviços e de seu desempenho, voltados para a satisfação dos clientes.

Customer intimacy strategy in B2B technology businesses in Colombia

The main objective of this Thesis is to analyze Customer Intimacy Strategy in B2B technology businesses in Colombia and the variables that have a direct relationship with it like perception, trust and networking. And how a Customer Intimacy Strategy can affect a company to achieve positive or negative results in an operation, in terms of business opportunities, relations and profitable and sustainable sales if properly managed or mismanaged. With a population of almost 50 million people, GDP average growth of 4.22%(considering 2013 up to 2017), a strategic geographic location in Latin America close to the middle of the region with direct access to the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, on the verge to reach a peace agreement ending its long time social and security conflict with the local guerrillas, Colombia is a country with a stable economic present and promising future. But despite the appealing business landscape and opportunities both in number and size, it is a developing economy where firms who are willing to run a startup or who currently have B2B technology operations in this country will find out that uncertainty and mistrust are two of the most critical variables that need to be overcome in order to achieve success. Their relevance will vary from one region to another, but will still be considered of most importance throughout the country. This matter is highly important to B2B technology businesses in Colombia because few firms are aware of the importance of customer intimacy strategy, believing that it is just a matter of social relationships and not considering the diverse number of variables such us perception, trust and networking that compose it. Customer intimacy strategy at the end becomes the main and most relevant source of sales in a B2B technology environment in Colombia.

Detection and Identification of Abnormalities in Customer Consumptions in Power Distribution Systems

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Customer Evolution in Sales Channel Migration

This research has been triggered by an emergent trend in customer behavior: customers have rapidly expanded their channel experiences and preferences beyond traditional channels (such as stores) and they expect the company with which they do business to have a presence on all these channels. This evidence has produced an increasing interest in multichannel customer behavior and it has motivated several researchers to study the customers’ channel choices dynamics in multichannel environment. We study how the consumer decision process for channel choice and response to marketing communications evolves for a cohort of new customers. We assume a newly acquired customer’s decisions are described by a “trial” model, but the customer’s choice process evolves to a “post-trial” model as the customer learns his or her preferences and becomes familiar with the firm’s marketing efforts. The trial and post-trial decision processes are each described by different multinomial logit choice models, and the evolution from the trial to post-trial model is determined by a customer-level geometric distribution that captures the time it takes for the customer to make the transition. We utilize data for a major retailer who sells in three channels – retail store, the Internet, and via catalog. The model is estimated using Bayesian methods that allow for cross-customer heterogeneity. This allows us to have distinct parameters estimates for a trial and an after trial stages and to estimate the quickness of this transit at the individual level. The results show for example that the customer decision process indeed does evolve over time. Customers differ in the duration of the trial period and marketing has a different impact on channel choice in the trial and post-trial stages. Furthermore, we show that some people switch channel decision processes while others don’t and we found that several factors have an impact on the probability to switch decision process. Insights from this study can help managers tailor their marketing communication strategy as customers gain channel choice experience. Managers may also have insights on the timing of the direct marketing communications. They can predict the duration of the trial phase at individual level detecting the customers with a quick, long or even absent trial phase. They can even predict if the customer will change or not his decision process over time, and they can influence the switching process using specific marketing tools

The temporal pattern of customer satisfaction: a construal-level approach

Customer satisfaction has been traditionally studied and measured regardless of the time elapsed since the purchase. Some studies have recently reopened the debate about the temporal pattern of satisfaction. This research aims to explain why “how you evaluate a service depends on when you evaluate it” on the basis of the theoretical framework proposed by Construal-Level Theory (CLT). Although an empirical investigation is still lacking, the literature does not deny that CLT can be applied also with regard to past events. Moreover, some studies support the idea that satisfaction is a good predictor of future intentions, while others do not. On the basis of CLT, we argue that these inconsistent results are due to the different construal levels of the information pertaining to retrospective and prospective evaluations. Building on the Two-Factor Theory, we explain the persistence of certain attributes’ representations over time according to their relationship with overall performance. We present and discuss three experiments and one field study that were conducted a) to test the extensibility of CLT to past events, b) to disentangle memory and construal effects, c) to study the effect of different temporal perspective on overall satisfaction judgements, and d) to investigate the temporal shift of the determinants of customer satisfaction as a function of temporal distance.

Sistemi hands-free basati su smart-glass a supporto di attivita di customer care di un'impresa

Da alcuni anni in ambito business ed enterprise si sta diffondendo l'utilizzo di dispositivi wearable al fine di rendere più efficiente ed efficace la gestione di molteplici attività e processi aziendali. I sistemi hand-held comunemente utilizzati in ambito lavorativo, tra cui smartphone e tablet, spesso non risultano idonei in contesti in cui un operatore debba interagire con il dispositivo mentre ha le proprie mani impegnate con attrezzature e strumenti di lavoro. I sistemi hands-free rimediano a tali problematiche supportando tecniche di interazione non convenzionali che consentono all'operatore di mantenere libere le proprie mani durante la consultazione del dispositivo e di rimanere concentrato sull'attività che sta svolgendo. I sistemi basati su smart-glass, oltre ad offrire funzionalità hands-free, presentano l'ulteriore vantaggio di poter presentare all'interno del campo visivo dell'utente importanti informazioni di supporto inerenti all'attività che sta svolgendo, avvalendosi anche dell'utilizzo di tecnologie di realtà aumentata. La sinergia tra dispositivi basati su smart-glass e tecniche di realtà aumentata sta destando un crescente interesse sia in ambito accademico che industriale; esiste la possibilità che in un prossimo futuro questa tipologia di sistemi divenga la nuova piattaforma computazionale enterprise di riferimento. L'obiettivo di questo lavoro di tesi è stato lo studio e la progettazione di una soluzione hands-free basata su smart-glass in grado di supportare alcune attività di customer care del Gruppo Loccioni, una società che si occupa dello sviluppo di sistemi automatici di misura e controllo per migliorare la qualità, l'efficienza e la sostenibilità di prodotti, processi ed edifici. In particolare, il sistema sviluppato ha consentito di migliorare la gestione dei processi di manutenzione e riparazione degli impianti energetici sostenibili che il Gruppo Loccioni installa presso le sedi di imprese clienti.