Performance Of Service Providers Research Articles

An empirical assessment of the use of an algorithm factory for video delivery operations.

Video service providers are moving from focusing on Quality of Service (QoS) to Quality of Experience (QoE) in their video networks since the users' demand for high-quality video content is continually growing. By focusing on QoE, video service providers can provide their subscribers with a more personalized and engaging experience, which can help increase viewer satisfaction and retention. This focus shift requires not only a more sophisticated approach to network management and new tools and technologies to measure and optimize QoE in their networks but also a novel approach to video delivery operations. This paper describes the components, interactions, and relationships of an algorithm factory for video delivery operation that assures high QoE for video streaming services. The paper also showcases the results of gradually implementing an algorithm factory in the video industry. Using a dataset from 2016 to 2022, we present the case of a European PayTV service provider that achieved improved performance measured by both objective and subjective metrics. The use of an algorithm factory significantly improved the PayTV service provider's performance. The study found a fivefold increase in the speed of critical incident resolution and a 59% reduction in the number of critical incidents, all while expanding the customer base and maintaining the same level of labor resources. The case also demonstrates a strong positive relation between the productivity measures of the PayTV operator and their survey-based quality ratings. These results underscore the importance of flawless QoS and operational excellence in delivering QoE to meet the evolving demands of viewers. The paper adds to the existing literature on relationships between operational efficiency, innovation, and subjective quality. The paper further offers empirical evidence from the PayTV industry. The insights provided are expected to benefit both traditional and over-the-top (OTT) video service providers in their quest to stay ahead in the rapidly evolving video industry. It may also translate to other service providers in similar industries committed to supporting high-quality service delivery.

Failure to maintain customers: antecedents and consequences of service downgrades

PurposeDespite service downgrades' undisputed practical relevance, service downgrades (e.g. customers shifting the price tier downward) have received surprisingly little attention from scholars. Previous studies have focussed on either the public policy issue of tiered pricing or optimal pricing by the service provider. Only a few studies have examined why customers shift across different price tiers and how such activities indicate their future behaviour.Design/methodology/approachBased on customer data collected from a major telecommunications company, the authors use a logistic regression model to investigate how two service modification levers (i.e. transaction- and relationship-level factors) influence the likelihood of service downgrade. The authors apply a survival model to study how service downgrades affect customer churn.FindingsTransaction-level factors such as service usage (e.g. the frequency and recency of underuse experiences) are positively associated with the likelihood of a downgrade. However, relationship-level factors (e.g. relationship duration and customer status) are negatively associated with the likelihood of downgrades. Customers engaging in downgrades are more likely to churn in the future.Originality/valueThe authors focus on downgrade behaviour, which can be perceived as customers' choice to move down the price tier, which likely ruins the service provider's performance. The authors conceptualise two fundamental driving forces behind a service downgrade: the misfits between the actual usage and the service plan chosen and the deteriorating relationships. The authors' empirical findings on the factors influencing downgrades provide insights for service providers seeking to prevent such behaviour.

Research-Based on Telecommunication in Mobile Service Provider's Performance using Enhanced Naive Bayes Classifier

In recent years, mobile service providers have rapidly expanded across all countries. Considering unpredictable development trends, mobile service providers are essential to knowledge-based service businesses. Performance may be improved by creating and disseminating new information through innovation activities based on the usage of business intelligence. This research examined the performance of mobile service providers across all countries utilizing an enhanced Naive Bayes classifier based on telecommunication. In comparison to quantitative variables, the naive Bayes performs quite well. In the beginning, data is collected and the normalization technique is used for data preprocessing. Feature extraction is carried out using “Term Frequency and Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF)”. “Decision Tree algorithm” is used for data analysis. Then the feature is selected using a two-stage Markov blanket algorithm. Enhanced Naïve Bayes Classifier is the proposed algorithm for telecommunication analysis and at last, the performance of the system is analyzed. This proposed algorithm is used to compare the mobile service provider's performances with existing algorithms. The proposed method measures the following metrics as Throughput, Packet loss, Packet duplication, and User quality of experience. The proposed algorithm is more effective and produces better results.

Quality management for high-contact professional service firms: a multiple-case evidence from Indian law firms

PurposeThis paper presents an exploratory study to understand the distinctive quality dimensions of high-contact Professional Service Firms (PSFs) and develop a conceptual model for Quality Management (QM). The paper is based on empirical evidences from multiple cases in leading Indian law firms.Design/methodology/approachThe paper adopted an exploratory, multiple, embedded and comparative case study design. The empirical evidence from multiple case studies in 10 law firms (data includes 42 individual interviews, archival records, field notes) was used to explore the QM dimensions for PSFs.FindingsThe results showed that QM in PSFs is a multifaceted and continuous process rather than a straightforward and episodic one. The findings reveal three distinctive dimensions of QM for PSFs: managing the firm's image; managing the client-firm interaction and support processes and; managing the perceived value of service outcome. Further, the results showed a significant variation in the design of QM practices in a relatively homogenous group of PSFs (law firms). This reflected the influence of personnel and organizational characteristics on the QM.Research limitations/implicationsThe research is based on evidences collected from 10 Indian law firms and the research design is exploratory in nature. The future research is suggested in terms of extending the scope and research design.Practical implicationsThe insights obtained from the paper have implications for managers working on the design of service operations and particularly service quality in high-contact PSFs similar to law firms. While the study does not prescribe a standard design of QM systems for PSFs, it seeks to foster the thinking of managers by helping them conceptualize the broad quality-control checkpoints and quality attributes specific to PSF settingsOriginality/valueThe academic research in the management of professional service quality is dominated by conceptual/theoretical models for customer evaluation of service provider's performance and the issue of operationalization of QM in PSFs is still needs further investigation. This paper contributes to the theory of service operations management (SOM) by focusing on the structure of QM systems in PSFs.

Development of a performance measurement system for a home furniture delivery and assembly logistics provider in Thailand

The global furniture retail brand, IKEA, has an extraordinary characteristic. Their customers can tailor the product's components for assembly. A last-mile delivery provider must be capable of providing both home delivery and assembly services. Their operational performance is often less efficient. Therefore, this article aims to develop a performance measurement system (PMS) for last-mile home furniture delivery and assembly services. The PMS was developed based on the case study of a provider that has been outsourced by the IKEA branch in Thailand. All related performance metrics were derived through the SCOR model. The key metrics were identified relying on the real operational data of the case and then prioritised using the analytic hierarchy process. The developed PMS was applied to measure the last-mile service provider's performance of the IKEA branch in Thailand. It benefits a provider for monitoring and controlling the quality of service to gain customer satisfaction.

The unbalanced indirect effects of task characteristics on performance in professional service outsourcing

As emerging markets have been playing more and more important roles in the global outsourcing markets, many companies from industrialized countries started to outsource various complex business processes oversea intending to take advantage of talented workforce at low cost. In this study, we focus on the challenging aspects and identify complex relationships that exist in the professional service outsourcing context from the service provider's perspective. Building on information processing theory, this paper aims to explain how task characteristics affect performance differently through a service provider's customer orientation and client integration. The unbalanced effects identified in this study influence the service provider's performance contradictorily and largely contribute to those unsatisfied results in professional service outsourcing. Using survey data from 192 Indian professional service providers, we find that both service provider's customer orientation and client integration are positively associated with its performance, while the impacts of two task characteristics (complexity and security) on customer orientation and client integration are in opposite direction. The unbalanced effects raise challenges in properly managing tasks to enhance performance. This study contributes to the much-needed efforts in the study of professional service outsourcing, a new and fast growing cross-border professional service activity. Managerial implications are also drawn from our study to practicing global clients and offshore service providers on how to successfully manage inter-organizational relations in outsourcing process to achieve expected benefits.

A reliable seamless handoff scheme based on enhanced MADM methods

One of the prominent issues these days is the support for heterogeneous handoff. Different types of network come with high end data rates for rapid data transmission. The issues still develops when the distance and the call duration being long for a mobile device. Frequent change of base-station in a mobile terminal causes the signal drop in which it is termed as a call drop in a mobile device. The process is known as handoff breakdown. To prevent the handoff failures we choose multiple attribute decision-making methods for selecting best network for handoff decision. A reliable handoff scheme is implemented for overcoming the handoff predicament. Two novel methods known as enhanced ordered weighted average method (E-OWA) and enhanced grey relational analysis method (E-GRA) were implemented and the results were compared under the reliable handoff scheme. Parameters such as data rate, packet loss, velocity, bandwidth, dwell time and jitter were used to analyse the service provider's performance.

Improving PSS Costing Based on Customer Integration

A company's economic survivability depends on the trust customers have into the company and its offered solutions. Consequently a company tries to act as a trustworthiness business partner. A difficult task, when customers cannot check the outcome and quality of an offered solution. Especially for Product Service Systems (PSS), the service part represents such an intangible performance, which cannot be used and verified by customers before consumption. Consequently, customers must trust a company's promised performance quality before they can experience the service. Service production always involves the customer into the service provision process, as the value is co-created. That is why, the service provider's performance and thus its service production costs rely trusting a customer's input. As trust plays such an important role we integrate it into service costing. In our work we present and evaluate a risk-based costing approach for PSS. The benefit of our cost model is to include risk factors associated with the trustworthiness of customer input. Our contribution to service science is the computation of service costs by the extension of standard Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing (TDABC) including the expected loss due to customer input. In our work we demonstrate the successful inclusion of trust-based risk factors into service costing to improve service cost management in the context of PSS.

Offshoring Business Process Services and Governance Control Mechanisms: An Examination of Service Providers from India

As emerging markets increasingly rely on service businesses through offshore outsourcing, we examine the role of governance control mechanisms in improving performance among business process outsourcing (BPO) service providers in India. Using data collected from 205 emerging market‐based BPO service providers in India, we examine the antecedents and consequences of establishing governance control mechanisms in BPO service providers. Specifically, we examine how structural (use of contracts with the client), administrative (effective allocation and demarcation of responsibilities within the firm), and relational (collaboration and information sharing with the client) mechanisms drive the performance of a BPO service provider operating in an emerging market. We also examine how key task‐related (task connectivity and task security) and client‐related (end customer orientation and global control) antecedents influence the use of different governance control approaches in this environment. Our analysis finds that both task connectivity and task security significantly impact use of structural and administrative mechanisms, whereas end customer orientation is significantly associated with the strength of the relational mechanisms governing the emerging market‐based BPO service provider and its client. Further global control significantly influences the strength of the structural mechanisms between the client and the BPO service provider. Finally, the three mechanisms have a complementary influence in driving the BPO service provider's performance.

Spectrum sharing across multiple service providers via cognitive radio nodes

The rapid growth of wireless industry and continuous emergence of new applications increase the demand for wireless spectrum. However, currently the spectrum assigned to different organisations is not utilised efficiently. Particularly, when an infrastructure of a service provider is overloaded and cannot accommodate more users because of the channel scarcity, the infrastructures of other service providers operating in the same area might be in under-loaded status. However, without a proper spectrum sharing scheme, the overloaded infrastructure cannot use the channels licensed to other service providers. This leads to low spectrum utilisation efficiency and higher call blocking rate of service providers. Significant research has been conducted to study sharing channels between cells within one service provider; however, sharing spectrum across different service providers is still under investigation. This paper proposes deploying a network of fixed cognitive radio (CR) nodes to maintain spectrum sharing across multiple service providers operating in the same geographical area. These CR nodes estimate the spectrum utilisation in a given area, and cooperate to provide the spectrum usage information for the overloaded infrastructures of service providers. This work discusses the implementation of the proposed CR-based spectrum sharing technique, and studies the impact of spectrum sharing on the service provider's performance. It is shown that the proposed technique reduces the call blocking rate and improves the spectrum utilisation efficiency. This technique removes the need of sensing spectrum in each user. Thus, it reduces the cost, complexity and battery power consumption of user devices.

The Robustness of the Effects of Consumers' Participation in Market Research: The Case of Service Quality Evaluations

The authors propose that participation in market research can determine consumers' experiences with and evaluations of marketing services/products. Building on and extending a prior finding that expectation to evaluate a service (or product) leads to more negative evaluations, this research investigates the robustness, process, and consequences of asking consumers to form evaluations of services/products. The results of several field studies (conducted in Israel, Korea, and the United States) show that (1) the effect of expecting to evaluate on the service provider's performance evaluation is enduring and lasts beyond the immediate aftermath of the service encounter; (2) the effect of study participation on the perception of marketers reflects true perceptual change rather than “made-up” perceptions—it requires supporting evidence and is eliminated if cognitive load interferes in the production of that evidence; and (3) the robust bias produced by expecting to evaluate cannot be eliminated by causing participants to consider the task effect on their evaluations or the impact of their feedback on the evaluated marketers. The authors discuss the broader implications of this research for understanding the impact of participation in market research on consumers' experiences and inputs.

Using Quality of Life to Evaluate Outcomes and Measure Effectiveness

AbstractEvaluating the outcomes achieved by service providers who assist people with intellectual disabilities is extremely important in terms of ascertaining whether service providers achieve their goals. Furthermore, knowledge of the outcomes achieved by service providers better equips those charged with managing them to make strategic decisions to fulfill their accountability obligations for the best use of limited resources. The authors provide support for the emerging view that quality of life is an outcome measure that can be utilized to assess service providers' performance. To do this they modified a performance measurement framework to illustrate how quality of life can be incorporated in a comprehensive analysis of the outcomes achieved by various stakeholders of the service provider. They then used three examples drawn from the literature (relating to employment services, the U.S. state of Nebraska, and family quality of life), to highlight how this framework could be applied. Ideas are also presented on other areas where a comprehensive stakeholder analysis, incorporating quality of life measures, could form part of a service provider's performance evaluation. The authors review some issues that should be considered in relation to the implementation of a comprehensive performance measurement system that incorporates quality of life as one of the outcome measures.

The Role of Service Level Agreements in Relational Management of Information Technology Outsourcing: An Empirical Study

This study extends the view that formal contracts and relational governance function as complements rather than as substitutes. We investigate how specific characteristics of service level agreements (SLAs) impact relational governance in information technology outsourcing relationships. Eleven contractual elements (categorized into three SLA characteristics: foundation, change, and governance characteristics) are hypothesized to act as complements of three relational governance attributes: relational norms, harmonious conflict resolution, and mutual dependence. Data for the study were collected through a survey of South Korean IT executives. Results of the study support the fundamental proposition of complementarity between formal contracts and relational governance, and indicate that well-structured SLAs have significant positive influence on the various aspects of relational governance in IT outsourcing relationships. However, the study also reveals that change characteristics of SLAs may act as a substitute for relational governance as these characteristics were found to dampen the level of trust and commitment through moderation effects. Overall, the findings support the proposition that well-developed SLAs not only provide a way to measure the service provider's performance, but also enable effective management of outsourcing engagements through the development of partnership-style relationships with high levels of trust and commitment.

Understanding student/alumni satisfaction from a consumer's perspective: The effects of institutional performance and program outcomes

The benefits of understanding and promoting student/alumni satisfaction are numerous. While this article draws on previous studies of the determinants of satisfaction in higher education, it has a different research focus. The study investigates the student/alumni satisfaction phenomenon in a consumer satisfaction framework. Results indicate that the formation of satisfaction judgments is a multidimensional process, and that the process is dependent on the degree of goal development that a student has for a particular aspect of his or her educational experience. If students have poorly formed goals for an aspect of education, they are likely to base their satisfaction judgments on institutional performance. If their goals are well formed, they are likely to base satisfaction judgments on the outcomes of the institutional performance. In general, however, student/alumni assessments of satisfaction with higher education are influenced by both the perceived quality of the service provider's performance and the perceived outcomes of that performance.