A typology of customer variability and employee variability in service industries

摘要

Service quality was subjected to investigation from the service provider's point of view for many years. However now it is accepted that the role of customer is equally important as he is also becoming a part of the service process. Behavior of the customer induces the employees to react in a particular way. The customer-employee dynamics is a challenging problem in service industry and front-line staff. Willingness of employees to participate in building quality of service is of paramount importance. If the employees feel that it is their duty to understand customer needs and react then they can provide service as per customer requirements. Though many studies have been conducted on service quality and its relationship with customer and employee variability, the issue being the human involvement it is mostly unpredictable. A systematic study of the variability of the customer and employee behavior is not so far studied in detail. The present study proposes a systematic typology of variability among customers and employees and a conceptual model of the relationships and impacts of these various types of variability on service. An empirical study is also conducted by using the samples of service companies in Taiwan to identify the prevalence and influence of various types of customer variability and employee variability. (32 refs.)