The Role of Customer Knowledge Management Process in Service Recovery Performance: An Applied Study to the Egyptian National Railways

Nehal El-Helaly,Azza El-Menbawey,Ahmed Ebeid

doi:10.18646/2056.21.15-001

Abstract

Customer knowledge represents an important organisational asset that organisations would utilize and manage to gain a competitive advantage. The purpose of this study is to develop and test a model to explain the role of customer knowledge management in service recovery performance; through examining the impact of Customer Knowledge Management (CKM) process on Service Recovery Performance (SRP), based on the perspective of the Egyptian National Railways' employees. It also attempts to measure how employees and customers evaluate the Egyptian National Railways' actual performance of service recovery. Two questionnaires were formed in order to collect the primary data through personal interviews. The first questionnaire was issued to the employees of the Egyptian National Railways in order to investigate their opinions regarding both of CKM process and SRP dimensions. The second questionnaire was for the Egyptian National Railways' customers to measure their evaluation of SRP. This paper has demonstrated the value of managing customer knowledge effectively in order to achieve a higher performance on service recovery. The empirical results indicated that organisations need to capture, share, acquire, and apply customer knowledge successfully in order to improve their service recovery performance. The results also demonstrated that employees evaluate their performance regarding the service recovery more positively than what customers do.

Highlights

Knowledge workers and service economy have become global megatrends since the beginning of twenty-first century
Customer Knowledge Management (CKM) process has a positive and significant impact on Service Recovery Performance (SRP); indicating that, when the ENR succeed in managing its customer knowledge effectively, its performance in implementing a successful service recovery strategy would improve
This result confirms the study of Boateng and Agyemang (2015) which concluded that Customer Knowledge (CK) sharing and application have a positive influence to service recovery performance

Summary

Introduction

Knowledge workers and service economy have become global megatrends since the beginning of twenty-first century. Managing customer knowledge becomes increasingly important in the rise of the service economy. Customer knowledge represents an important organisational asset that organisations would utilize and manage to gain competitive advantage (El-Helaly et al, 2013). Organisations could manage CK in order to improve innovation, support research and development, and facilitate organisation's sense of emerging market opportunities (Sofianti et al, 2009). CKM is considered as a continuous strategic process by which organisations enable their customers to move from being passive buyers and information sources, to become empowered knowledge partners (Chen and Huang, 2011). CKM represents an organisational approach that organisations utilize to support the role of their customers as value co-creators within the organisation (Belkahla and Triki, 2011)

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