Customer satisfaction with waits in multi‐stage services

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the relative importance of customer perceptions of waits in a multi‐stage service.Design/methodology/approachThe stages included the wait at the point of service‐entry, the wait during the service stage in which the core service was experienced and the wait at the service‐exit stage as the customer was preparing to leave. Satisfaction with the waits and satisfaction with the core service product, employees' behavior and the physical setting were examined in relation to customers' perceptions of service quality. Four measures of customers' perceptions of service quality were used in this study. These included overall customer satisfaction, willingness to recommend the service to friends, willingness to bring friends to the service and repatronage intentions. A survey was developed based on a review of the literature and in collaboration with the manager of a full‐service restaurant. The survey was administered during the course of the meal by restaurant employees. Multiple regression analysis was used to identify the extent to which satisfaction with each wait affected the four customer perceptions of service quality.FindingsResults showed that the only wait satisfaction that consistently affected customer perceptions of service quality involved the service‐entry wait.Originality/valueThis study is one of the first to empirically examine the effect of service waits at multiple stages of a service operation on perceptions of service quality.