Impact of Communication during Service Encounters on Customer’s Perception of Organization Image

Abstract

Communication is an interactive process for building a relationship between the organization and the customer. Effective communication during service encounters has a definite impact on customer's perception of the organization. This qualitative study attempts to explore how the customer's perception of the organization image is impacted by the way the service engineer communicates with the customer during a service interaction and the receptionist's manner of lodging a complaint at the call centre. There has been considerable research on the impact of service quality on consumer perception leading to loyalty towards an organization. However, not much material was found on the impact of verbal and non-verbal communication on service quality. The study was carried out in organizations providing cooling solutions to both individual as well as institutional customers. Telephonic interviews were conducted with both these types of customers. To reinforce the veracity of the conclusions drawn from the first set of interviews, a second round of telephonic interviews were also conducted with customers of two other multinational companies dealing with the same product. An interesting revelation of the study was that most organizations did not revert to the customer for feedback once the complaint was attended to. A follow-up call after the service encounter would certainly enhance the image of the company in the eyes of the customers. It would not only show the organization's commitment to quality but also increase customer loyalty through relationship building.

Masked smiles matter – employee verbal expertise and emotion display during COVID-19

“…Based on these results, both FLE emotion display as non-verbal cue and expertise as verbal cue are highly relevant for service interactions by increasing customer perceived FLE credibility and affecting customer emotions and responses (Giebelhausen et al, 2014;Jain et al, 2009;Marinova et al, 2018;Wood et al, 2008). Generally, literature agrees that in dyadic service interactions non-verbal cues compared to verbal cues have a stronger impact on customer responses.…”

“…knowledge and skills) which is in line with Ericsson and Smith (1991) who understand expertise as task-specific knowledge. Generally, FLE verbal communication and competence (Coelho & Augusto, 2008;Jain et al, 2009) have an impact on customer responses during service interactions with high levels of expertise increasing customer satisfaction (Coelho & Augusto, 2008). Moreover, FLE high verbal expertise has been shown to drive customer emotions (Lee et al, 2011) since customers experience feelings of delight, pleasantness and comfort when interacting with a knowledgeable and competent FLE, while low levels of verbal expertise lead to an increase in negative emotions.…”

Customer Types and the Empathetic Response

“…Staff is trained in a variety of customer service techniques and many hold annual or semi-regular training assessments on enhancing service. Jain, Sethi, and Mukherji (2009) viewed service encounters as a way to build shared meanings, and reflection on communication continues well after the initial sales (reference) encounter. Ha and Stoel (2008) envisioned a customer relationship as a type of relationship investment in which both customer and retailer (or librarian) benefit.…”

Understanding Customers Perception of ATM Data Integrity

“…Cooksey (2014) explored customers perception of time in recovery process in Australia; (Hossain and Leo, 2009) unveiled service quality in retail banking in the middle east. Customers perception on preannouncement of application software was explored by (Hoxmeier, 2000) and in other IT related fields by (Jain, Sethi, and Mukherji, 2009). Customer perception to understand, explore or investigate other parameters in organizational context was discussed by (Hung and Wong, 2007;Jehn and Scott, 2008;Jeng, 2011;Julien and Tsoni, 2013;Kattara, Weheba and El-Said, 2008) and examination of customers perception in relation to other parameters like financial awareness (Angeles and Delhi, 2014).…”