Customer Participation in Service Delivery

Customer Participation in Service Delivery

INTRODUCTION

Service delivery is an interactive and dynamic process which involves

participation between the service organization, the service provider

and the customer. According to Lovelock and Young (1979), customer

participation can raise organizational productivity and efficiency and

improve service performance. The principle behind this notion is that

customers can fulfill some of the employees current functions thereby

reducing the service providers perceived workloads. There are five

main characteristics (participation, intangibility, heterogeneity,

simultaneity and perishability) of the process which are unique to

service delivery and can impact on the level of participation that is

required from a customer in order to add value to the service

encounter (Claycomb, 2001). The level of participation and individual

role of each customer is determined by the nature of the service. For

example, a patient in a hospital would be expected to have a high

level of direct interaction with the service provider whereas the

level of interaction between an airline pilot and a passenger would be

fairly minimal. By assessing the expected level of customer

participation, a service organization can implement specific design

considerations that will support the level of customer participation

in the creation of the service delivery. By discussing the

abovementioned issues, this essay will attempt to determine whether

the quality of the service experience is likely to be enhanced by an

increase in the level of customer participation.

CHARACTERISTICS OF SERVICE DELIVERY

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