The Service Industry and the "Moment of Truth": The Quest for the Holy Grail

Organisations are now seeking to drive corporate performance by maximising the value of their customer relationship. However, beyond this, many companies often fail to appreciate the importance of developing specific, well-defined and integrated business processes focused on the customer. The paper explores this phenomenon by looking at service encounters. It notes that service encounters are much more likely to be delivered within a condition that has a supportive management culture and which recognises the need for delegation of authority and an adherence to customer service standards. This, it reckons, calls for a customer-oriented management philosophy which is the key to gaining competitive advantage. The paper, therefore, identifies and provides an approach to management that seeks to achieve new objectives with a greater consistency of both internal and external relationships. One key contribution of this paper is its enunciation of the importance of "moments of truth". Secondly, it highlights the antecedents which shape customer experience through extensive review of existing literature.