Handling Customer Disconfirmations

How employees deal with potentially disconfirming service encounter situations is of utmost importance for service organizations. Appropriate reactions by frontline service providers can decrease the likelihood of customer disconfirmation and sometimes even convert a disconfirming event into a memorable, satisfying encounter for the customer. In order to design operating policies and training strategies to properly handle disconfirmation situations, it is necessary to investigate frontline service providers' behavior when they are confronted with customer disconfirmations. Gaby Mairamhof gives a model of the service provider's cognitive response process to disconfirmation built on decision theory; the service provider's decision process is seen from an information processing perspective. Based on individual and social psychology the author develops hypotheses about what happens in the service provider's mind within each process step. Organizational and personal variables are identified that may influence the response process. The model is tested empirically and implications concerning the management of critical encounter situations are discussed.

Autorentext
Dr. Gaby Mairamhof ist Universitätsassistentin am Institut für Handel, Absatz und Marketing an der Universität Innsbruck, wo sie auch promovierte.

Zusammenfassung
The service provider's decision process is seen from an information processing perspective. Based on individual and social psychology the author develops hypotheses about what happens in the service provider's mind within each process step.

Inhalt

1. Introduction.- 1.1. Research problem and purpose.- 1.2. Research process and structure.- 2. Positioning the research subject.- 2.1. Services.- 2.2. Service quality and customer satisfaction.- 2.3. Service encounter and the frontline service provider.- 2.4. Critical service encounters.- 2.5. Importance of studying service providers' behavior in critical service encounters.- 3. Service providers' behavior in critical service encounter situations.- 3.1. Behavior as a dimension of performance.- 3.2. Types of behavioral performance studied.- 3.3. Modeling service providers' behavior in critical service encounters.- 4. Potential determinants of service providers' behavior in critical service encounter situations.- 4.1. Personal characteristics.- 4.2. Organizational characteristics.- 4.3. Discussion of potential determinants.- 5. Service provider's response to customer disconfirmation: a decision making and information processing perspective.- 5.1. The service provider's response process.- 5.2. Disconfirmation situation.- 5.3. Disconfirmation cues and other stimuli.- 5.4. Awareness of disconfirmation.- 5.5. Evaluation of disconfirmation.- 5.6. Identification of reaction alternatives.- 5.7. Evaluation of reaction alternatives and choice.- 6. Conceptual model of the service provider's response process to customer disconfirmation.- 7. Empirical exploration of the service provider's response process.- 7.1. Approach and objectives of the study.- 7.2. Research method.- 7.3. Description of the questionnaire.- 7.4. Interviewer training.- 7.5. Data collection.- 7.6. Data analysis.- 7.7. Results of the incident descriptions.- 7.8. Discussion of results of incident descriptions.- 7.9. Empirical model and hypotheses.- 7.10. Statistical tests of hypotheses.- 7.11.Limitations and implications for further research.- 8. Conclusions.- 8.1. Contribution.- 8.2. Managerial implications.- References.