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Automatiserade och mänskliga servicemöten i komplexa tjänsteleveranser
As self-service technologies become more common in service provisions, a deeper understanding is needed of how customer satisfaction is affected by automated service encounters. Drawing from theories of customer satisfaction, human interaction, and the dynamics of complex service provisions, the differences between automated and interpersonal service encounters in the initial part of a service provision are examined in terms of customers? evaluation of the service encounter itself, overall satisfaction, as well as the service encounter?s impact on global evaluations and evaluations of other non-dependant service encounters. The study was performed on people travelling by air on Swedish domestic routes. Passengers were asked to evaluate the airline?s performance on different attributes of the air travel they had undertaken, as well as to form an overall evaluation of the service. The study shows that no differences can be found between automated and human interaction service encounters in terms of evaluation of the encounter itself, the service as a whole, or the impact on the global evaluation. It is however shown that halo effects are found between two human interaction encounters in the service provision. Managerial implications and topics for further research are discussed.