Managing customer expectations in the service encounter

Abstract

Consumers of services have expectations about what they will receive from the delivery system. These expectations are beliefs about future events which, when compared with the perceived actual service delivered, are presumed to influence satisfaction and assessments of overall service quality. The purpose of this paper is to propose a model that outlines the process through which expectations operate at the point of delivery and provide a framework for future investigations. Implications for management practice focus on service provider behavior at the point of delivery and on control of cues that may influence consumer expectations once they have entered the delivery system. Directions for research include verification of model relationships and identification of specific types of cues that relate to attributes commonly considered in consumers' judgements of service quality.

Complaints and compliments assessment in developing service delivery measurement

“…Correspondingly, compliments are defined as a result of exceeding expectations and satisfying consumption (Friman & Edvardsson, 2003) to express satisfaction. As discussed by Coye (2004), and Cheng , compliments could also be defined as positive perception of good service that is able to exceed patients' expectation as a result of service satisfaction. This suggests that the service performance is of a high service quality.…”

“…Perceptions refer to the patients' evaluation of the service provided, as good quality of services will result in a positive perception, while poor service will entail a negative perception . Expectation is the central of satisfaction (Coye, 2004) and perception can disconfirm expectations for worse or better or confirm it as neutral (Mohd Suki et al, 2011). Hence, service dissatisfaction can be referred as a negative perception of poor service quality that fails to exceed patients' expectation, which is expressed through complaints or medication satisfaction claim (Shikiar & Rentz, 2004).…”

Cultural Differences Identification and Its Effect on E-Service Quality Perception

“…Consumers use various cues and information sources to form their expectations of an upcoming service encounter (Coye, 2004) and this has significant implications to their eventual e-service quality evaluations and other outcomes (Kim and Moon, 2009). …”

Job performance expectations and perceptions of retail employees: Cognitive dissonances between self-reports and supervisor-ratings

“…Comparatively, it is the customers' rather than staff's needs that seemed to be the main organisational focus despite increasing empirical evidence that customers' perceptions of service quality and satisfaction are positively related to their service encounters with employees (e.g., Bitner et al, 1990;Coye, 2004;Heskett et al, 1997Heskett et al, , 2003Jiang, Klein, Roan, & Lin, 2000;Tsaur & Lin, 2004;Netemeyer & Maxham III, 2007).…”

“…These are widely documented in the services, marketing, retailing, and consumer behaviour journals and books (e.g., Bishop-Gagliano & Hathcote, 1994;Bitner, Booms, & Tetreault, 1990;Coye, 2004;Heskett, Sasser, & Schlesinger, 1997Netemeyer & Maxham III, 2007;Zeithaml, Berry, & Parasuraman, 1990). As services are intangible, customers tend to evaluate the quality of services by observing and experiencing the behaviours and attitudes of employees during their service encounters (Schneider & Bowen, 1993).…”