Service Encounters Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Service Encounters - Essay Example The industry has also attracted more investors leading to a high competition for the market for the services. The management of an organization is therefore charged with a responsibility of ensuring that they acquire and sustain a competitive advantage over the other competing organizations that provide similar services. To be able to achieve this, the management relies on their employees to provide the customers with the level of satisfaction that can make the customers develop good reputations for the organization (Connoley, n.d, p.5). In this regard, it will be the major role of the front-line officers in a service industry to ensure that there is a kind of rapport created between them and the customers at the first instant in order to retain the customers for a long time. One of the key issues to be addressed in the service industry is how the customers perceive the kind of service that they are given by the particular industry. This is primarily determined by the kind of ‘ dyadic’ interaction that occurs between the customers and the service providers (Bitner et al, 1990, p2). The service encounter and subsequent relationship developed between the customers and the front office service providers make the management of the organizations value the employees as one of the most valuable assets in the organization. Customers and the service personnel in service organizations The diverse expectations of the participants in a service industry makes social encounters complicated in a number of ways. Firstly, the employees that are delivering the service need to derive some level of job satisfaction in the way they perform their duties. There is also a need to satisfy the needs of the customers in the industry. This makes these two actors become important participants in the service industry (Solomon et al, 1985, p). The quality of services provided by a given organization may be pointed out by the customers. The complaints that are given by the custome rs concerning the quality of the services offered by an organization can help the management of the organization establish the cause of a given problem in the delivery process (Tax & Brown, 1998, p.2). There are different views on the quality of the services offered depending on the industry itself. For instance, in hotel industry, what can be considered as quality service is the peaceful stay that has been accorded to a given customer in a given hotel. The quality of a service then follows the perception that the customers have about it. It was observed that in hotel industry, ‘the expectations and the perceptions of the customers are crucial because they are involved in the performance of the service’ (Kusluvan, 2003, p.265). However, there are important factors that impede the inclusion of the customers in the service quality management by the organization. Each of the customers in a given hotel has some unique demands and want to be served in a manner that suits thi s individual demands (Kusluvan, 2003, p.265). The service providers are then charged with a difficult task of keeping a wide track of the different customer demands. Besides, unlike the production industries where the quality of the products can be measured against the original standards that had been established, the quality a service may not be specifically broken down to the individual tangible components. The perception of the custome