Page 104 - DMGT308_CUSTOMER_RELATIONSHIP_MANAGEMENT

Unit 4: Customer Retention, Acquisition and Expectation

book a short holiday to Venice at Easter. What are your expectations of the service? In all Notes
likelihood you want Expedia to find you a flight exactly when you want to travel and a hotel
close to the key sights in Piazza San Marco at a price you can afford – because that is what you
hope and wish for.
Figure 4.6: Possible Levels of Customer Expectations

Source: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967070X0600062X
However, you probably also see that demand at Easter may constrain the availability of airline
seats and hotel rooms. And not all airlines or hotels you may be interested in may have a
relationship with Expedia. In this situation and in general, customers hope to achieve their
service desires but recognise that this is not always possible. We call the threshold level of
acceptable service adequate service – the level of service the customer will accept. So the customer
may put up with a flight at a less than ideal time and stay at a hotel further away from the key
Venetian sites, if he or she really wants to travel at Easter. Adequate service represents the
‘minimum tolerable expectation,’ the bottom level of performance acceptable to the customer.

Figure 4.7: Dual Customer Expectation Levels

Source: Parasuraman et at. (1991 a, b)
Figure 4.7 shows these two expectation standards as the upper and lower boundaries for customer
expectations. This figure portrays the idea that customers assess service performance on the
basis of two standard boundaries: what they desire and what they deem acceptable.

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