Managing Service Relationships: An Overview

摘要

The increasing prominence of the service sector as well as the value-added opportunities through services has led marketers to focus their quality improvement efforts on improving service design and delivery. However, given the various unique characteristics of services as well as the complexities in determining consumer expectations of service, customer relationship management efforts in services are quite challenging. A focus on enhancing the quality of the services offered is certainly warranted; however, firms have also found that consumer evaluation of service quality goes beyond merely the characteristics of the offered services and, in fact, encompasses a wide variety of dimensions of the service encounter. Also, although repeat business in services holds greater opportunities for cross-selling and up-selling, the loyalty necessary for ensured repeat business is more difficult to develop and maintain.