6- The Service Encounter

Introduction:

The server and the customer interact at the heart of any service. Here, emotions collide with economics in real-time and where most customers assess service excellence. Customer satisfaction with interaction is currently viewed as a function of engineering measurements of throughput and output quality in service science. It is assumed that a service process has been optimised if executed efficiently and output variability is low. In our opinion, this overlooks crucial psychological aspects that exist at the subconscious level and that, if recognised by management, could be addressed to improve consumer happiness.

The Service Encounter:

All activities engaged in the service delivery process are called the service encounter. Some service managers use the term “moment of truth” to describe the pivotal point in a service encounter when interactions are at their most acute.

The service encounter greatly impacts the customer’s sense of service quality. Throughout his or her encounter with a service provider, a customer assesses the quality of service. For example, a bank customer’s service experience begins when he approaches bank authorities with questions and is influenced by factors such as the time it takes to meet with a senior officer, deposit or withdraw cash, and the civility of the bank employees among others. During these contacts, a client would evaluate the service provider’s level of service. Every episode in the service encounter encapsulates the customer’s happiness and intent to do business with the provider again.

For example, if a person visits an insurance company to settle a claim and is not treated appropriately by the firm’s staff, he may decide not to purchase additional insurance coverage from the firm. In a sequence of service interactions, however, each encounter can be critical, impacting the customer’s happiness or discontent.

Customers rate a service encounter based on the service company’s workers’ level of care and concern during the transaction. Staff responses to customer issues directly influence client happiness. Furthermore, client happiness rises when service industry employees demonstrate flexibility in service delivery.

Types of Service Encounters:

There are three types of service encounters:

1. Remote encounters
2. Phone encounters
3. Face-to-face encounters

 

1. Remote Encounters:

A remote encounter is one in which no human interaction is made. ATMs, telephone answering machines, voice mail service, automated mail order service, and obtaining billing information on an automated service/line are all examples of automated services. Customers can judge the quality of a remote interaction based on tangible service clues (such as the air conditioning and piped music playing in the ATM enclosure or the length of the wait outside it) and the quality of technical processes and systems. To avoid a negative impact on the company’s reputation, service providers should ensure that the quality of these systems is consistently maintained. Many individuals, for example, use websites like Cleartrip.com and Makemytrip.com to book aeroplane tickets. These businesses should ensure that the process is simple and takes less time. Because clients must enter data independently, clear instructions should be provided to assist them. The same may be said of online banking and e-commerce platforms.

2. Phone Encounters:

The use of telecommunications has expanded dramatically over the years. Companies have begun to provide telephone services such as customer support, complaint registration, order taking, and ticket reservations. Telecommunication facilities are used by service firms such as utilities, insurance, telecommunications, and banking to provide service to clients. In such encounters, the service quality can be judged based on the employee’s knowledge, tone of voice, and efficiency or efficacy in providing the service.

3. Face-to-Face Encounters:

A face-to-face interaction occurs when a service provider and a client interact directly. These encounters happen in restaurants, banks, and grocery stores, among other locations. It’s tough to measure the quality of service in these interactions because it requires assessing both verbal and nonverbal behaviour. Furthermore, in face-to-face interactions, clients provide quality service for themselves by interacting with service provider workers. The concept of boundary spanners is introduced here. Boundary spanners are individuals who connect their organisation to the outside world. The exchange of information is the primary concern of boundary bridging. A boundary spanner also tries to alter outside environmental components and processes. As a result, such individuals must be cautious in projecting the correct image of their company to external clients. First impressions are crucial in service interactions. The adage “first impressions are lasting impressions” applies to service businesses almost flawlessly. These businesses should ensure excellent service from the start to encourage clients to return.

Service Encounters: Satisfaction or Dissatisfaction:

The quality of a service encounter will determine customer pleasure or discontent. Below are some factors that influence customer satisfaction or unhappiness and a customer’s opinion of the service.

• Recovery:

When a service failure occurs, “recovery” refers to how well the service provider’s staff responds to the problem. Flight delays, failure to acquire a hotel room despite making a reservation in advance, and poor service in a restaurant are all examples of service failure. Customers are aware that ideal service is not always feasible. However, how a service provider responds to and satisfies his consumer during service failures is up to him. Customers should be carefully listened to, and the problem should be identified properly and without ambiguities. In addition, a service provider should admit to making a mistake, apologise, and tell the consumer that he or she will be able to remedy the problem.

Customers should be told how the problem will be solved and offered additional perks to make them happy. Such measures bolster customers’ trust and faith in a service provider, leading to a favourable opinion of the service.

• Adaptability:

The capacity of a service provider to deal with specific requests or wants of his consumers is referred to as adaptability. A flexible service delivery system will aid service organisation staff in managing these types of requests.

Consider the following scenario: Giving overdrafts on bank accounts, modifying course schedules to meet the needs of students, providing a special meal to patients on flight travel, and so on are examples of adaptability. Customers evaluate service quality in terms of the service delivery system’s flexibility and the ability of a service provider’s workers to offer the service. Customers are more likely to have a positive impression of a service if it is flexible.

• Spontaneity:

Employees’ unintentional or voluntary actions in delivering a service are called spontaneity. Responding swiftly to emergencies and willingly bending the rules to satisfy a customer’s particular demands are examples of spontaneity. Staff’s voluntary efforts to assist consumers will raise customer satisfaction. On the other hand, customers are unsatisfied when service staff neglect, discriminate against, or treat them harshly. A service provider’s spontaneity creates a favourable impression of his service.

• Coping:

Coping is the technique through which staff efficiently manage demanding clients and situations. Dealing with anxious and upset consumers and their excessive demands are examples of coping circumstances. Consumers may find themselves in this scenario if they are to blame for their displeasure and refuse to cooperate with the service provider, other customers, the law, or industry norms. In such scenarios, employees find it difficult to impress clients. In such cases, the service provider should demonstrate empathy. Customers should be told that businesses understand and care about their feelings.

Service Evidence:

Service evidence is another component that determines a customer’s perception of a service. Customers seek evidence of the service in every interaction with the service provider due to the intangibility of services. Customers will form particular opinions about the proof of the service based on these clues, therefore service providers must manage even the tiniest tangible clues related with their service. If a service provider fails to manage service evidence, there is a risk that he would unwittingly send the wrong message to his consumers, resulting in unfavourable customer views.

• Service personnel:

They are crucial in determining the customer’s perception of the quality of a service interaction. The ability of employees to be passionate, courteous, and spontaneous will make consumers’ service experience enjoyable. Fast-food businesses, for example, make their service visible by employing employees who are friendly and appealing to the eye to serve consumers.

When interacting with clients, these employees’ pleasant and cheerful demeanour improves client perceptions of service quality and leads to customer satisfaction. The uniform colour scheme, the surroundings, the graphics, the employee dress code, and the omnipresent and familiar golden arches all help to make the service element palpable in the case of McDonald’s. Walt Disney World is another well-known example of a firm that makes service tangible through its employees. All company employees, known as “cast members,” must adhere to high personal grooming standards.  This allows the organisation to keep a uniformly pleasant appearance among its service staff while also giving the service a tangibility.

• Process of service delivery: 

The service delivery process includes the flow of operational operations and the many processes in delivering a service. The quantity of flexible or standard policies and the technical or human modes of delivery are all considered while evaluating the service process. With new technology, processes have been made simpler and more flexible. Customers will have a more favourable impression of the service as a result of this.

• Physical environment:

The physical environment is the third sort of service evidence that impacts customer impressions. The physical environment comprises a service provider’s ambience and the design of the service facility’s interiors and exteriors. For example, a couple who wants to dine at a restaurant with a quiet and calm atmosphere might avoid going to a popular restaurant because they believe it is usually noisy due to the enormous number of people it serves. A facility’s interior design can potentially create a favourable impression of the service. People nowadays also enjoy travelling to malls since they provide an ideal environment for shopping (and window shopping). The malls are thoroughly air-conditioned, with pleasant perfume and occasionally good music permeating the air. They are well-lit, roomy, and spotless. Malls also feature appropriate signs to guide customers. They deliver a pleasant purchasing experience in general.

Service evidence helps a service organization’s marketing strategy by shaping customers’ first impressions, managing their trust in the service provider, facilitating quality service, providing sensory stimulation to customers, changing the service organization’s image, and instilling the service philosophy in the service provider’s employees.

• Shaping the first impression of the customer:

When a customer has no information about a service, he or she will hunt for physical indicators to assess the service’s quality. Customers believe what they see and base their opinions on what they observe about the service organisation and service. Furthermore, many individuals believe that the initial impression is always the greatest. As a result, a service organisation should aim to use clients’ first impressions to express its service commitment, competency, and ability to customise services. For example, a person planning a vacation estimates the many tourist packages offered, but the tangible clues he witnesses at the service office significantly impact his decision. The physical surroundings of the service facility or the exhibition of certificates, medals, and trophies given for exceptional service quality, which help portray the service firm’s commitment to exceptional service quality, are examples of tangible hints.

• Managing the trust of the customer:

Companies strive to earn their customers’ trust and confidence in order to maintain existing customers and attract new ones. Customers must acquire a service before they can experience it, therefore service marketing is founded on trust. The money-back promise is a prominent approach of managing trust. If the consumer is dissatisfied with the service, the company guarantees to refund his money using this method. BlueDart, for example, guarantees a reimbursement if a customer’s package is not delivered on time to the correct location. This not only increases consumer involvement in service delivery but also increases customer faith in service quality. A glass window separates the kitchen from the serving area in many restaurants. Customers may see how their food is prepared in the kitchen as a result of this. When a customer requests delicacies such as crabs, several 5-star hotels frequently display live crabs to the customer to ask permission before cooking them.

• Facilitating quality service:

A company’s ability to manage the concrete cues to its service shapes a customer’s opinion of its quality. Customers frequently acquire views about the quality of service based on how it is given or the processes involved in its delivery. Firms can increase the value of their service by striving for perfection in essential characteristics such as order, client friendliness, and cleanliness. Firms should also develop proof that is appealing to the target market. For example, while marketing the movie ‘Harry Potter’, the film distributors also marketed eyeglasses and toys used by the hero to entice kids to the movie. As a result, the distributors were selling the film and the whole experience that came with it.

• Providing a sensory stimulation to customers:

Attaching an entertainment or fun aspect to a service makes it easier to market it. Customers’ senses are stimulated as a result, and they become aware of the difference between them and other service providers. A tourist destination with an amusement park, bungee jumping, skiing, a movie theatre, and trekking facilities, for example, will emphasise the fun component of the location and will be more appealing to most tourists than a tourist attraction on a hill with no such facilities.

• Changing the image of service organisations:

A company that wants to modify its image should prioritise evidence management. It is a difficult undertaking for the service organisation to replace the current image in customers’ minds with a new one. For example, when McDonald’s entered the Indian market, it had little trouble conquering it for children and teenagers. To project the image that it caters to the entire family rather than just children and teenagers, it ran a series of advertisements depicting elderly couples dining at the restaurant and sharing tender moments while enjoying delicious food, families celebrating birthdays at the restaurant, and so on. The food chain’s strategy helped transform its image from one catering to children and teenagers to a complete family destination.

• Instilling the service philosophy in the employees of the service provider:

When training, a service provider should clearly explain his organization’s service philosophy to his personnel. Management can also inculcate the service culture in its employees through physical proof, which helps employees reinforce the company’s service philosophy in their minds and transmit it to consumers. For example, service staff in theme parks and toy stores dress up like cartoon characters to convey the fun factor and instil a lively and buoyant mood in other service people, who can do the same when serving clients. Service tangible hints also show a service organization’s care and concern for its employees. For example, the atmosphere generated in an advertising agency can aid in both boosting staff creativity and delivering the appropriate image to customers.

Image:

A customer’s view of service quality is also influenced by the customer’s mental image of a service organisation. The customer’s view of an organisation is called an organisational image, which might be at the local or corporate level. A consumer with a favourable impression of a business is more inclined to overlook some instances of poor service. On the other hand, repeated unpleasant encounters will tarnish the company’s image in the eyes of the customer. In contrast, if a customer has a poor impression of a service organisation and fails to offer adequate service, the unfavourable image of the organisation will be reinforced in the customer’s mind, resulting in dissatisfaction.

Price:

Its pricing influences customers’ perceptions of a service. The pricing of a service influences customers’ opinions of value, quality, and satisfaction. Customers frequently mistake pricing for service quality due to the intangible nature of services. Customers may distrust the quality of a service if it is offered at a low price. Customers, on the other side, anticipate good quality when a service is expensive. Customers can also evaluate the worth of a service based on its pricing after they’ve used it.

Service Experiences:

Figure depicts our view of the service encounter as a core task surrounded by the customer’s psychological experience during the transaction. Over the last five years, we’ve been conducting a thorough examination of the behavioural literature to identify what, if any, concepts and study findings might apply to service encounters. While the impact of psychology is undeniably most significant in face-to-face and phone conversations, we believe that many of the concepts and study findings apply equally well to online and email encounters.

• Understanding emotions
• Sequence effects
• Duration effects
• Shaping attributions
• Perceived Control

1. Understanding Emotions:

Emotions are both a source of and a result of a meeting. Understanding what causes different sorts of happy and negative emotions is essential to creating a positive experience. This helps managers to establish an emotional platform at a high level and to identify and control stages of the systems that are likely to elicit strong emotions at a tactical or process level. Appraisal theory, which explains the criteria that result in distinct emotions due to a transition from a neutral emotional state, is an effective means of defining emotional responses. According to this view, the type of emotion we feel (excellent or negative) is determined by whether the outcome:

• improves our situation or makes it worse,
• is associated with a penalty or a reward,
• is certain or just a possibility,
• is a significant/powerful event that is difficult to cope with or it’s not a very significant event, and we can easily cope with the change, and
• is caused by the individual or an outside agency

2. Sequence Effects:

The majority of service encounters are made up of a set of events that take place over time. The natural temptation for laypeople is to focus on getting off to a good start and trust that things will take care of themselves as the service encounter progresses. On the other hand, service folklore holds that every minute is essential. We now know that neither of these beliefs is correct. According to several studies, people pay attention to the peak event, the concluding event, and the trend of a series. This has far-reaching ramifications for design, from how we present information at a call centre (get the bad news out of the way first) to how we teach a class (end on a high note, or “stick the dismount”).

3. Duration Effects:

An hour is not an hour, as we all know. The speed with which it passes is determined by various circumstances, including whether we are engaged in enjoyable or unpleasant activities, paying attention to the passage of time, and how many segments the experience is divided into. How might we make pleasant events appear longer and unpleasant events appear shorter in retrospect? There is evidence that the more separate segments recognised by the client, the longer the procedure appears. When visiting an amusement park, a few shorter rides make the day seem longer and more pleasurable than a few longer rides, even though the time spent riding is the same. More stages and options at a contact centre give the impression that the contact is more prolonged than it is. In general, we find that the length of a wait, or more accurately, the level of dissatisfaction with a wait, is determined by:

(i) emotions and moods,

(ii) rate of goal progress and evidence of goal progress,

(iii) degree of perceived control, and

(iv) attention paid to the passage of time

These four characteristics can be used to infer existing approaches to dealing with the psychology of waiting. These variables also suggest other ways to improve the waiting experience. In contact centres, for example, a call-back option gives clients more control.

4. Shaping Attributions:

According to one perspective, we are prone to accept responsibility for achievement and reject responsibility for failure. (One of the most common reasons for such attributions is to protect one’s self-esteem.) We want to identify ways to communicate the customers’ duty up front without undermining their self-esteem via service encounter design. Another realisation is that we overestimate our potential to influence a result ultimately determined by chance. (We use counterfactual thinking, or mental simulations, to imagine what might have happened.) This is frequently perceived as the final stage of a lengthy process, leading to the practical advice that servers should avoid reporting near misses with customers when a combination of variables results in an unfavourable final result.

5. Perceived Control:

In almost every service interaction, customers must cede some control to the service provider in order for the task to be completed, but customers prefer situations in which they believe they have some influence.

According to research conducted in various service situations, there is a link between perceptions of control and satisfaction. For example, studies in health care management consistently show that patients are happier when they have some control over their treatment regimens than when doctors have complete control. Simple alternatives like allowing a patient to choose which arm to take blood from result in a lower pain level than when a patient is forced to draw blood from a specific arm. Even in intensive care, patients who are free to select when they have visitors when they eat, and how much activity they may do have lower stress levels and recover faster. Cognitive control is another type of control that is frequently used as a substitute for actual control, in which the customer believes the system will perform well. In a call centre, for example, calls will be answered in the order they arrive, and paychecks will be issued on the 15th of the month. The concept of control can be treated more sophisticatedly in organising service encounters when regarded in this light.

Creation and Evaluation:

The service encounter assessment model is based on a service encounter when a customer engages directly with a service. During a particular length of time, this term incorporates all parts of the service firm with which the consumer may contact, including its staff, physical facilities, and other tangible features.

The following is how a service model is created and evaluated:

1. The figure depicts a general model of the antecedents and outcomes of consumer satisfaction in service interactions based on the preceding principles. According to the first section of the model, a customer’s attitude will influence their expectations for the outcome of a particular service interaction.
2. According to the second stage of the process, the customer’s immediate reaction after consumption is based on a comparison of prior expectations and perceived performance. This results in confirmation of expectations or positive/negative disconfirmation when expectations and performance do not match.
3. The model assumes that disconfirmation’s causal contributions will moderate consumer pleasure. That is before a consumer assesses his or her level of dissatisfaction and alters his or her following behaviour. The location of the attribution concept corresponds to contemporary research in consumer behaviour and attribution theory.
4. The model’s final section depicts service encounter pleasure as an input to the more general construct of perceived service quality, which leads to subsequent behaviour toward the service firm.

 

A Model Of Service Encounter Evaluation

Marketing Mix Effects:

Though all of the mixed elements are likely to influence satisfaction directly, the model and experiment aim to illustrate their impact on satisfaction antecedents to understand how this influence occurs. The services marketing mix is depicted in the figure as entering the service encounter satisfaction process by directly impacting three antecedents of satisfaction: expectation, perceived service performance, and attributions. Two new mix elements–physical evidence and participants–are the focus of the following discussion and experiment due to their lack of attention in the marketing literature and their importance in many service settings.

Customers want physical evidence of what they will experience in a service encounter because services are intangible and cannot usually be sampled before purchase. Environmental design, decor, signage, and business cards/stationery communicate messages that help establish the firm’s image and affect client expectations. The service environment’s participants also hint at what the consumer should expect. Customers can categorise the service firm and establish pre-experience expectations for the service encounter by looking at their attire and nonverbal indications about the manner of the service company workers and other customers in the service facility.

Physical data such as noise level, odours, temperature, colours, textures, and furniture comfort may influence perceived performance in the service encounter in the following step of the evaluation process. According to research, such changes in the physical environment might influence how people perceive their experiences, regardless of the actual outcome. Similarly, service personnel’s attitudes and behaviours impact how healthy services are viewed. Such behaviours are frequently related to what is known as process or functional quality in the service literature, as opposed to result or technical quality. Customers may also be impacted by other customers’ perceptions of their own experiences.

The model implies that marketing mix factors may impact service satisfaction by influencing attributions for service disconfirmation. When things go wrong in a service interaction, for example, personnel usually try to placate irritated consumers by apologising, offering compensation, and explaining why the service delivery failure happened. Any of these actions could sway customer perceptions of the firm’s role in the failure and the chance of it happening again. When a failure occurs, variances in the firm’s physical facility may indicate different underlying causes.

Influencing Customer Perceptions:

His impressions of the provider strongly influence a customer’s decision to acquire a service. As a result, service organisations must understand the aspects that influence client views. Based on these variables, service organisations should build strategies to impact customer perceptions and attain higher levels of customer satisfaction. The tactics listed below will assist service organisations in influencing client views.

Enhance Customer Satisfaction through Service Encounters:

Service organisations must recognise that service encounters are critical in determining whether consumers are satisfied or dissatisfied. Customers’ satisfaction levels during service encounters should be increased by service organisations innovating new ways to deliver their services. Additionally, service organisations should train their personnel on how to recover from a service failure, provide flexibility in service delivery, provide ideas on how to be spontaneous, and aid them in dealing with demanding consumers.

Reflect Evidence of Service:

Customers frequently try to examine the service evidence using concrete clues such as the service organization’s personnel, processes, and physical proof before purchasing. They assess the service organization’s employees’ friendliness, procedural understanding, and eagerness to assist consumers. Customers also consider the processes’ adaptability and the physical evidence regarding ambience and layout. Organizations should recognise the importance of these hints and make every effort to reflect evidence of their service in terms of people, processes, and physical proof.

Communicate and Create a Realistic Image:

A service organisation should correctly convey its commitments and follow through on them. This will provide the company a positive image in the eyes of its customers. In the minds of current and potential clients, word-of-mouth publicity about a firm can build a positive or lousy picture of it. Customers who have had favourable experiences with the company will spread good word-of-mouth publicity. In contrast, those who have had negative experiences will spread bad word-of-mouth publicity to ruin the company’s image. As a result, it is critical for businesses to be realistic when making promises to their customers. They should refrain from making extravagant statements that could harm their company’s reputation in the future if they fail to deliver on their promises.

Enhance Customer Perceptions of Quality and Value through Pricing:

Customers frequently use pricing as a criterion for determining the worth or quality of a service. They are unsatisfied when they believe the service they are receiving is not worth the money they are paying. Dissatisfied customers will spread poor word-of-mouth, which can be harmful to the service organisation. As a result, service providers should use a pricing approach that reveals the genuine worth and quality of the service.