Customer service in the Baltic region: an exploratory analysis

Abstract

Purpose

The goal of this research is to identify which service activities contribute most to customer satisfaction in the technical wholesale industry in the Baltic States.

Design/methodology/approach

In order to obtain an understanding of customer service in the countries of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, a mail survey was done to investigate customer service obtained by 184 customers of a large technical wholesale firm doing business in the Baltic States.

Findings

The overall results of this research indicate that in the technical wholesale industry of the Baltic countries customer service contributes to customer satisfaction. Of the six dimensions tested, all of the relationships were in the expected direction. Only one did not contribute significantly to customer satisfaction. In order of importance to customer satisfaction the dimensions are: process quality, product quality, delivery quality, communication, availability and product support.

Research limitations/implications

To obtain more generalizable results, future research areas should include investigating the model using other firms within the same industry, and testing the model in additional industries within the Baltics. Additional research may include testing the model in other countries in Northern and Central Europe such as the well‐developed Scandinavian countries, and the lesser developed countries of Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Poland as well as other areas of the world. This model was tested using data from the technical wholesale industry and additional research may focus on testing the model across different industries in different countries as well.

Practical implications

The results are of relevance to practitioners, in particular for firms expanding to the Baltic area. In addition, anecdotal evidence suggests that the level and number of customer service activities provided by technical services firms in the Baltic area of Northern Europe are based solely on management judgment or practices borrowed from competitors without considering the impact of service provision on customer satisfaction. Instead practitioners should consider the process used to deliver services and products.

Originality/value

This is the first empirical work measuring the impact of customer service dimensions on customer satisfaction using data from the Baltic States.

Citation

Johnson, C.J., Grimm, C.M. and Blome, V. (2007), "Customer service in the Baltic region: an exploratory analysis", The International Journal of Logistics Management, Vol. 18 No. 2, pp. 157-173. https://doi.org/10.1108/09574090710816913