ABSTRACT
In recent years, a growing number of firms across all industries have begun to see the importance of making ‘customer experience’ (CX) a top priority. To achieve and maintain a competitive edge, it is imperative that a service firm systematically identifies and manages the factors that influence the customer experience across the full customer journey, at all interactions between a firm and its customers. This chapter addresses how successful service firms manage the customer experience and address shortcomings in the customer journey when they arise. The service encounter ‘triad’ is introduced as a key concept to highlight the collaborative relationship between the firm, the customer, and the employee – and some of the many challenges firms face in ensuring that service encounters are maximized for mutual benefit. Regardless of how well a service firm performs, failures are inevitable. Thus, service recovery is vital for all service managers to understand, which is a systematic process undertaken to return aggrieved customers to a state of satisfaction after a service has failed to live up to expectations. Service guarantees are also explained as a way to promote the service promise to customers, and communicate the firm's image and market position to its customers, employees, and competitors.
