Successful firms are making a concerted effort to develop closer ties to their customers. However, the customer has not always been king. By describing the dialectic character of customer service and tracing it back in history, this paper provides some of the knowledge necessary to explain its...

The supply chain is the flow of both information and material through a manufacturing company, from the supplier to the customer. Traditionally the flow of material has been considered only at an operational level, but this approach is no longer adequate. It is now essential for businesses to...

The exclusive value principle is one important factor determining the value of the service to the customer. High margins often result from the customer′s perceptions of “exclusive value”. Success depends on understanding and making decisions within the context of the customer′s psychic...

Looks at what it takes to create effective organizations. States that they use some system for unifying the efforts, thoughts and actions of diverse groups within the organization. These organizations have a “unifying factor” that is clearly defined and has a well‐understood meaning...

Consumers in a wide range of contexts whether purchasing goods or services are increasingly using technology. The role of people in the delivery of services is diminishing as companies strive to lower costs and consumers become less inclined to wait or queue. Through a number of case studies,...

Customer service is a prerequisite for both developing and maintaining lasting buyer‐seller relationships. Long‐term benefits have been proved over time. As a strategic element of the marketing mix, it is no longer dismissed on the basis of cost. Customer service issues involved, including...

Purpose – Waiting lines and delays have become commonplace in service operations. As a result, customer waiting time guarantee is a widely used competition strategy in service industries. To implement waiting time guarantee strategy, managers need to not only know the average of waiting time,...

Purpose – In this paper the authors present a study that uses Twitter to identify critical elements of customer service in the airline industry. The goal of the study was to uncover customer opinions about services by monitoring and analyzing public Twitter commentaries. The purpose of this...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how task- and relation-oriented customers co-create high quality services with frontline employees from the perspective of customer-dominant (C-D) logic. Design/methodology/approach – The authors reviewed the service management literature and...

Discusses the death of inter‐firm and intra‐firm competition as we know it and propose an approach beyond competition – “the pursuit of immortality”. Our digital age offers immense and unprecedented opportunities to bring forth the latent potential of organizations, by allowing...