High Performance HR Practices And Customer Satisfaction: Employee Process Mechanisms

This research examined organizational commitment and customer focus as mediators between HR practices and customer satisfaction of seventy-one work units from twenty-five business units from a single firm in the food service industry. Customer satisfaction was assessed by ratings from multiple customers eighteen months after HR practices and process mechanisms were assessed from unique groups of employee respondents. Results suggest that employee commitment and customer focus partially mediate the relationship between HR practices and customer satisfaction

Managing customer relationships: Should managers really focus on the long term?

Researchers and business thought leaders have emphasized that, towards maximizing the lifetime value of customers, firms must manage customer relationships for the long term. In contrast to this recommendation, we demonstrate that firm profits in competitive environments are maximized when managers focus on the short term with respect to their customers. Intuitively, while a long term focus yields more loyal customers, it sharpens short term competition to gain and keep customers to such an extent that overall firm profits are lower than when managers focus on the short term. Further, a short term focus continues to deliver higher profits even when customer loyalty yields a higher share-of-wallet or reduced costs of service from the perspective of the firm. Intuitively, while such revenue enhancement or cost reduction effects enhance the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, they lead to even more intense competition to gain and keep customers in the short term. These findings suggest that the competitive implications of a switch to a long term customer focus must be carefully examined before such a switch is advocated or implemented. Paradoxically, customer lifetime value may be maximized when managers focus on the short term.target pricing; customer equity; price discrimination; customer relationship marketing; customer acquisition; customer retention;

Total Quality Management and Residential Real Estate Agency Issues

This study explores the implications of applying Total Quality Management (TQM) principles to residential real estate brokerage, specifically the need for customer focus. Deming's (1986) TQM system of fourteen points reduced to four distinct subsystems. The most critical of these is the need for customer focus. Several approaches to agency in residential real estate brokerage are presented, with an examination of the ease with which customer focus can be obtained with each approach. The main finding is that customer focus can be achieved easier with the agency specialization approach.

Customer Focus Newsletter, May-June, 2010, Vol. 7, no.3

A bi-monthly bulletin to keep the department/agency management teams of state government better informed. We hope to consolidate most of the service update messages we send throughout the month and keep you updated about the work of the Customer Councils. If yours is one of the many departments who participated in the second annual DAS customer satisfaction survey recently, we thank you for taking the time to give us this important feedback. We look forward to sharing survey results with you, and pledge to consider responses carefully as we work to determine benchmarks and set future priorities

Techniques for Providing Outstanding Customer Service

Providing exceptional customer service should be one of the primary goals for all academic libraries. However, with the day- to- day interruptions, librarians sometimes forget all about customer service. By developing a Customer Service Task Force, Penfield Library has been able to develop a number of projects in the past two years to greatly improve its reputation. Such methods as surveys and small and large focus groups were conducted to determine what projects needed to be addressed. Tips and tricks to providing quality customer service in a small college/university library are also presented

Customer Focus Newsletter, July-August, 2009, Vol. 6, no.4

A bi-monthly bulletin to keep the department/agency management teams of state government better informed. We hope to consolidate most of the service update messages we send throughout the month and keep you updated about the work of the Customer Councils. If yours is one of the many departments who participated in the second annual DAS customer satisfaction survey recently, we thank you for taking the time to give us this important feedback. We look forward to sharing survey results with you, and pledge to consider responses carefully as we work to determine benchmarks and set future priorities

Integrating Kano’s Model and SERVQUAL to Improve Healthcare Service Quality

The purpose of this research is focus on customer relationship management (CRM) strategies and relationship between service attributes and customer satisfaction through Kano’s model especially on healthcare service at the private hospital. The paper specifically investigates the applicability of the model and the key factors in the hospital service business. The hospital service quality much depends on the performance of the attributes that define a service. The aim of this paper is first to investigate the attribute of service quality using Servqual perspective, thus the management is able to adjust the relationship between performance of service attributes and customer satisfaction, and second, through a case study in the private hospital to prove that the importance of a service attribute is a function of the performance of that attribute. An empirical study using questionnaires with a focus on service enquiring about the performance of service key attributes and overall customer satisfaction was conducted using Servqual perspective including 5 parameters i.e. Tangibles, Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance, Empathy. The data were fed into the Kano customer satisfaction model which used Five-level Kano questionnaire for analysis and comparison between one attribute to the others. This research found that there are three of the total 26 service quality attributes have been categorized as “attractive”. Four service quality attributes have been categorized as “must be”, and sixteen of them as “one-dimensional”. However, there is no service quality attribute can be categorized as “reverse” and “questionable”. It can be predicted that offering customers “must be” or expected quality attributes will not be enough for customer satisfaction in few next days cause of the contemporary world and the environment changing. Hence, companies should focus on “attractive” quality attributes instead of “must be” or “one-dimensional” attributes in order to satisfy customers and to achieve competitive advantage. The research limitations is the Kano model of customer satisfaction needs to be extended to other customer behavior variables and also management strategic response to increase customer loyalty; which not include in this paper. The implication is the methodology employed here can be easily applied by hospital management to evaluate customer behaviors and service quality performance

Techniques for Providing Outstanding Customer Service

Providing exceptional customer service should be one of the primary goals for all academic libraries. However, with the day- to- day interruptions, librarians sometimes forget all about customer service. By developing a Customer Service Task Force, Penfield Library has been able to develop a number of projects in the past two years to greatly improve its reputation. Such methods as surveys and small and large focus groups were conducted to determine what projects needed to be addressed. Tips and tricks to providing quality customer service in a small college/university library are also presented

The Relationship Between Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction in the Telecommunication Industry: Evidence From Nigeria

This study investigates the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction in the telecommunication industry with a focus on Mobile Telecommunication Network (MTN) Nigeria. A total of 230 respondents participated in the study. Research questions and objectives were set, alongside the hypotheses that were formulated and tested. Descriptive statistics comprising the simple percentage and tables were used for data presentation and analysis. Regression analysis and Pearson product moment correlation coefficient were employed in testing our hypotheses. The study reveals that service quality has effect on customer satisfaction and that there is a positive relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction. The researcher concluded by recommending that organisations should focus more attention on service quality, because of its effects on customer satisfaction. To ensure that customer satisfaction level is high, organisation must first of all know the expectations of the customers and how they can meet such expectations. Customer satisfaction helps in customer loyalty and retention. It has been discovered that it costs to attract new customer than to retain existing ones. It is also recommended that organisations should welcome suggestions from customers and more programmes should be designed to measure service quality and customer satisfaction.Customer, Service, Customer Satisfaction, Service Quality, Customer Loyalty.

Generating Competitive Priority Strategy in Transformer Industry

The transformer market competition in Indonesia is getting more attractive and dynamic. This encourages transformer manufacturers to improve competitiveness, such as quality, cost, timely delivery, and service. Therefore, companies need to understand customer needs and choose the right competition strategy. There are three alternative strategies to compete, cost leadership, differentiation, and focus. This research understands the customer needs and choose the right strategy to face the competition. The design of this study used survey and data collection through questionnaires. Data analysis methods using QFD and AHP combined with Focus Group Discussion (FGD) implementation. QFD analysis results in the form of the house of quality shows two major things: recommendations action for internal improvement and priority contribution value which will be the next input analysis with AHP method. The result of AHP analysis on the priority of contribution value in choosing an alternative strategy shows that the most appropriate strategy is differentiation, with the company focus on its competitive advantage. Practical implications of this research, for the management need to increase production through efficiency and cost reduction. This research develops product development theory by digging priority customer needs as one element to determine the competition strateg