Interaction fluency: a customer performance measure of multichannel service

Abstract

PurposeThe 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/approachIn 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.FindingsThe 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/implicationsThe 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/valueThis 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.