M.B.A. / This study focuses on the impact of staff turnover on the level of service provided to customers. Understanding your customers' service requirements and .meeting or exceeding these needs and requirements and requests are key success areas for any business. There is, however, various factors that can have an impact on a business's understanding ofwhat the customer requires, and it is here that the customer relationship plays an important role. These relationships are built by people - staff. Staffturnover can be seen as the number ofstaff members that moved into, and out of, a position over a given time period, and can influence a business and customer relationships in different ways. A secondary study was embarked upon to determine what staff turnover and customer service entails. This focussed on defining the concepts, causes and possible effects thereof. A primary study was undertaken in the Bulk Cryogenic Gasses industry to determine if there is a link between the two variables. A questionnaire was sent out to various respondents to gather primary data to record customers perceptions of the impact regarding stafftumover on the level ofservice provided to them. Based on the responses received from the questionnaires, the majority ofcustomers were not impacted by staff turnover. The minority of customers who stated that they were impacted by stafftumover experienced a positive change. It is clear from this study that staff turnover does not impact negatively on the level of service provided to customers

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ABSTRACT Providing good customer service is crucial to many commercial organizations. There are different means through which the service can be provided, such as Ecommerce, call centres or face-to-face. Although some service is provided through electronic or telephone-based interaction, it is common that the service is provided through human agents. In addition, many customer service interactions also involve a computer, for example, an information system where a travel agent finds suitable flights. This thesis seeks to understand the three channels of customer service interactions between the agent, customer and computer: Customer-Agent-Computer Interaction (CACI). A set of ethnographic studies were conducted at call centres to gain an initial understanding of CACI and to investigate the customer-computer channel. The findings revealed that CACI is more complicated than traditional CHI, because there is a second person, the customer, involved in the interaction. For example, the agent provides a lot of feedback about the computer to the customer, such as, I am waiting for the computer . Laboratory experiments were conducted to investigate the customer-computer channel by adding non-verbal auditory feedback about the computer directly to the customers. The findings showed only a small insignificant difference in task completion time and subjective satisfaction. There were indications that there was an improvement in flow of communication. Experiments were conducted to investigate how the two humans interact over two different communication modes: face-to-face and telephone. Findings showed that there was a significantly shorter task completion time via telephone. There was also a difference in style of communication, with face-to-face having more single activities, such as, talking only, while in the telephone condition there were more dual activities, for instance talking while also searching. There was only a small difference in subjective satisfaction. To investigate if the findings from the laboratory experiment also held in a real situation and to identify potential improvement areas, a series of studies were conducted: observations and interviews at multiple travel agencies, one focus group and a proof of concept study at one travel agency. The findings confirmed the results from the laboratory experiments. A number of potential interface improvements were also identified, such as, a history mechanism and sharing part of the computer screen with the customer at the agent's discretion. The results from the work in this thesis suggest that telephone interaction, although containing fewer cues, is not necessarily an impoverished mode of communication. Telephone interaction is less time consuming and more task-focused. Further, adding non-verbal auditory feedback did not enhance the interaction. The findings also suggest that customer service CACI is inherently different in nature and that there are additional complications with traditional CHI issues.

Prof. J. Walters

Magistro darbo tikslas – klientų aptarnavimo kokybės tyrimas valstybinėje mokesčių inspekcijoje. Tikslui realizuoti pasirinkti tyrimo metodai: su darbo tema susijusių Lietuvos Respublikos įstatymų, kitų teisės aktų, reglamentuojančių valstybės tarnybą, Viešąjį administravimą bei Lietuvos mokslininkų publikacijų analizė, interviu, anketinė apklausa bei statistinė duomenų analizė. Teorinėje dalyje analizuojami kokybės vadybos metodų taikymo ypatumai viešajame sektoriuje Naujosios viešosios vadybos ir Visuotinės kokybės vadybos aspektu. Darbe nagrinėjama Tarnybos visuomenei Lietuvoje dabartiniu metu samprata, apimtis, paskirtis, kokybinis santykis su paslaugų gavėju. Tyrimo rezultatuose analizuojama VMI Radviliškio skyriaus mokesčių mokėtojų aptarnavimo kokybė. Tyrimas atskleidė valstybinės mokesčių inspekcijos Radviliškio skyriaus mokesčių mokėtojų aptarnavimo kokybės lygį, darbuotojų kompetencijas, vadovų vizijas bei perspektyvas siekiant aukštesnių viešųjų paslaugų kokybės ir geresnių veiklos rezultatų rodiklių bei pačių mokesčių mokėtojų požiūrį į gaunamas paslaugas. / The aim of the master thesis is to reveal the quality of customer service at State Tax Inspectorate. To achieve the aim the following research methods were selected: analysis of laws of the Republic of Lithuania related to the topic of the present thesis, as well as analysis of other legal acts regulating public service and public administration, of publications by Lithuanian scholars, interview, questionnaire survey, and statistical data analysis. The theoretical part analyses the peculiarities of application of methods of quality management at the public sector in the aspect of New Public Management and Total Quality Management. The paper analyzes the concept, scope, purpose of serving the society in Lithuania at present as well as its qualitative relation to service recipient. Quality of taxpayer service at Radviliškis Department of State Tax Inspectorate is analyzed in the research results. The research revealed the level of quality of taxpayer service at Radviliškis Department of State Tax Inspectorate, its employees’ competences, managers’ visions and perspectives in seeking better indicators of public service quality and of activity results, it also revealed taxpayers’ attitude towards the services they get.

Background: Contemporary research has been studying what motivates employees in different working fields. In this study, Herzberg’s research is examined in order to take a closer look at the motivation of customer service employees. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine how the employees of customer service are motivated to work by mainly relating this study’s results to Herzberg’s research. Method: The study method is a case study with qualitative research including semi-structured interviews and snowball sampling approach. Theoretical framework: The fundamental theoretical framework in this study consists of Herzberg’s two-factor motivation theory. Empirical material: The empirical material in this study consists of ten customer service employees. All the empirical data has been collected through face-to-face contact. Conclusion: The overall picture of the empirical material is that the customer service employees are motivated by these Herzberg factors: “Salary”, “Interpersonal relations”, “Policy and administration”, “Achievement”, “Recognition”, “The work itself”, “Responsibility”, “Advancement” and finally “Possibility of growth”.

<p>In recent years, Geographic information system (GIS) is becoming a useful tool for location related analysis and decision making. Linking huge data using space, as in a GIS, is a new way to help any bank understands better its data and its customers. China's banking industry opens to full foreign competition in 2006; banks in China have to focus on developing their strengths in the competition. Chinese local banks need to improve their abilities by providing high quality services and using information technology more intelligently. GIS technology can help this.</p><p>The thesis from two aspects investigates how GIS can help bank for customer services, one is site selection of bank branches or ATMs and another is providing bank loan to customers. We choose case study as a research strategy for this thesis. The research is based on the theoretical frameworks starting with GIS analysis methods, GIS processes, customer service management and GIS applications in banks. We learn from previous author's experiences and use Norrkoping spatial data for analyzing as methodology demo to acquire an understanding of how to utilize GIS to support customer services for banks.</p><p>As a result, GIS can help banks to improve customer services management. The general processes are data collection, data analysis, and data display. Building a GIS support system based on "customer focus" in a bank is a good choice under the pressure of commercial competitions. Nevertheless, for offering better service to customers, bank can combine web in GIS support system. How to optimize Web GIS for customer query from World Wide Web could be one opportunity for the future research.</p>

Nowadays customers have more varieties of similar products from different companies around the world through the Internet. Internet brings customers power but loyalty than before. In order to maintain customers¡¦ loyalty, companies have learned to keep good relationship with customers, and IT is the best media for the task. Therefore, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System is expected to help companies to manage their customer relationship. The research used multiple case studies method and chose United World Chinese Commercial Bank (UWCCB), Data Systems Company (DSC), and Adavantec Company to study how enterprise implements CRM system. The research results would illustrate why the enterprise needs CRM, what CRM is, how enterprise implements CRM, and what kinds of benefit they can get from CRM.

Given the increasingly competitive environment characterizing many industries, customer service, specifically, post-sales technical support, has evolved as a key source of differentiation and profits. Against this backdrop, firms are looking to cross-sell products during customer service provision to generate revenue and transition their customer service operations from cost centers to profit centers. However, in the context of customer service, customers are contacting the firm about a product failure and not a purchase need, making cross-selling during customer service provision a challenging task. Essays 1 and 2 investigate which factors affect cross-sell outcomes in the customer service context. Essay 1 addresses the following questions: Do characteristics of the customer, customer service agent, and cross-sell offer influence cross-sell revenues? Cross-sell revenues are defined as the sales generated per customer in the customer service context. Using data on the cross-sell transactions of 6782 customers of a computer systems firm who contacted the firm for technical support, Essay 1 demonstrates that for risk-averse customers and customers who accept cross-sell goods (versus services) as the cross-sell offer, cross-sell revenues increase. However, when risk-averse customers accept a good (versus service) as the cross-sell offer, cross-sell revenues decrease. Surprisingly, for customers who own focal products with high functionality, cross-sell revenues decrease, and this effect becomes more negative as the customer service agent’s resolution ability increases. Essay 2 investigates cross-selling during customer service in an intercultural context and addressees the following question: What influences the likelihood of a cross-sell purchase during customer service by a customer in country X[subscript s] from a customer service agent in Country Y[subscript j]? Multinational firms offshore their customer service operations to a set of low-cost countries to reduce costs and gain access to specialized skills. Customer service agents in these countries provide technical problem resolution services to customers in a different set of countries, creating a cultural dyad between customers and customer service agents. Currently, such firms are asking their offshored customer service agents to cross-sell during customer service provision. Using data from a computer systems firm of 117,721 customer service encounters during which a cross-sell product was pitched, of which 3.6% resulted in a purchase, Essay 2 demonstrates both positive and negative effects of cultural distance on the likelihood of a customer making a cross-sell purchase during customer service. Specifically, Essay 2 shows that cultural distance (1) weakens the negative effect of agent resolution ability, (2) strengthens the positive effect of risk aversion, and (3) weakens the positive effect of failure severity on cross-sell purchase likelihood. I use the findings from both Essays 1 and 2 to generate implications for managers on how to improve cross-selling outcomes in their customer service operations. / text

Purpose - The purpose of this research is to analyse how employees’ perception of customer service is linked to the brand. The aim is to analyse the connections between brand and the employees’ perceptions and develop managerial implications based on those findings. Problem – Davis et al. (2008) brought the attention of the influence employees have in increasing or decreasing the firms’ brand. Connecting the employees work role in customer service to see how these influence the brand in reality at LSPs.   Method – A deductive mixed method was applied throughout this research and used in the format of several case studies. The qualitative data was retrieved from interviews with employees at LSPs both in Thailand and Sweden and regarded as the primary source of data collection with the quantitative data as support. The survey, based on the frame-work of SERV*OR, was structured on a 7-point Likert Scale and distributed from the same sampling as for the interviews. Pattern matching was applied to analyse the qualitative and quantitative data to determine if reality matched theory.   Conclusions – As seen from the findings, employees and customer service are inter-twined and not separate entities. This is due to them reflecting on their personal perception of what customer service is and how they view their position. Through customer service, employees become an extension of the firms’ brand and based on their individual perception they will project it to the customer thus being able to influence the customer’s overall perception. This shows how brand and employee-customer service are interdependent in the communication which is often based on individual perceptions and not from what the LSP wants their employees to perceive of their brand.   The branding of the firms in this study is perceived by employees in a way that reflects their individual roles in customer service in terms of being fast, professional and having the ability to problem solve. It is also indicated that employees wish for more training and guidance from managers, consequently they have needed to rely on each other to handle the function of customer service at the LSPs.