Customer expectations on service guarantees

Abstract

Focuses on customer expectations on service guarantees. Theoretically, the basis consists of previous guidelines for service guarantee design. The empirical context is public transport, where customers that have invoked a service guarantee participate in focus groups. The results expand on prior research, which has argued that negative industry reputation is a hotbed for service guarantees and that the most preferred guarantee is unconditional; the paper’s results imply that customers prefer detailed regulations for when the guarantee is applicable, and that their general disbelief in a company with negative reputation makes the unconditional guarantee seem like a rip off. The results also indicate that the customers of a public service want the guarantee to be fair, that is, fairness in the possibility for all customers to invoke the guarantee, that all customers are familiar with the guarantee and that it cannot be misused by cheating customers. One of the contributions of the article is therefore to add “fairness” as a dimension to the previous guidelines suggested by Hart.

Citation

Björlin Lidén, S. and Edvardsson, B. (2003), "Customer expectations on service guarantees", Managing Service Quality: An International Journal, Vol. 13 No. 5, pp. 338-348. https://doi.org/10.1108/09604520310495822