Interaction fluency: a customer performance measure of multichannel service

Harold Cassab and Douglas L. MacLachlan

International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, 2006, vol. 55, issue 7, 555-568

Abstract: Purpose - The paper seeks to show an empirical test of customer‐based measures of Interaction Fluency developed by the authors to contribute to the assessment of customer service performance across multiple contact points upon the implementation of relationship management practices and technologies. Design/methodology/approach - In the paper the measures are developed using the critical incident technique and adapting existing scales in the service literature. A model is tested empirically with survey data from airline customers (n=284) using an Ordered Logit approach. Findings - The paper finds that empirical results suggest that the ability of front‐line employees to smooth interactions with customers, as well as the efficacious performance of self‐service channels, are strong drivers of customers' loyalty intentions. Research limitations/implications - The findings in this paper are restricted to the airline context in an environment of familiarity with automated service tools such as found in the USA. Future research needs to be conducted using actual loyalty behavior as the dependent variable. Originality/value - This paper considers the customer's perspective of the multichannel service interaction to propose a new construct of “interaction fluency” and builds a model to capture the functional form of the relationship between operational measures of the new construct and customer loyalty intentions.

Keywords: Customer retention; Self‐service; Market research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:ijppmp:17410400610702151

DOI: 10.1108/17410400610702151

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management is currently edited by Dr Luisa Huatuco and Dr Nicky Shaw

More articles in International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().