Knowledge about Service Encounters

Personal selling literature argues that knowledge is constructed from declarative and procedural knowledge (Weitz et al., 1986). Declarative knowledge is defined as a set of facts associated with a category, or “knowing what”. An ability to identify a customer’s needs is critical to be able to match the type with the suitable interaction approach (Szymanski, 1988). Procedural knowledge is defined as a sequence of actions or

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approaches to handle a situation, or “knowing how”. Frontline personnel access

declarative knowledge to identify a customer type. This process enables them to find a suitable approach to handle the situation from the stock of procedural knowledge. Studies in personal selling demonstrate that knowledge about customers allows frontline personnel to adapt their social interaction approaches with customers, leading to effective sales (e.g., Matsuo & Kusumi, 2002; Sharma, Levy, & Evanschitzky, 2007; Weitz et al., 1986).

Drawing on personal selling concepts (e.g., Sujan et al., 1988; Szymanski, 1988), Bettencourt and Gwinner (1996) suggest that knowledge in the service context has a similar structure. They argue that experience enables frontline service personnel to develop more elaborate customer categorisation schemes that are associated with specific behavioural strategies. Experience allows frontline personnel to recognise cues and place them in the right category. Various interactions enable them to polish social interaction strategies. Declarative knowledge informs procedural knowledge that guides them to handle service encounters. These authors follow up their proposition with two studies that confirm that knowledge is generally associated with frontline personnel’s ability to customise personal interaction with customers (e.g., Bettencourt et al., 2001; Gwinner et al., 2005).

The service management and marketing literature also discusses knowledge about service encounters in relation to the customer’s perception of service quality. The quality of the service encounter is usually measured using technical and functional (or social interactions) dimensions (Grönroos, 1984). Hennig-Thurau and Thurau (2003) translate these quality dimensions into service personnel skills. Frontline personnel are

48 required to display technical skills and social skills. Technical skills refer to knowledge the service personnel need to be able to offer and execute at core service delivery. Social skills refer to the ability of service personnel to engage with customers by taking their perspective into the delivery service. Frontline personnel need to be able to understand how customers see, think and feel (Hennig-Thurau & Thurau, 2003). Li et al.’s (2009) study supports the view that technical and social skills are required to

deliver a satisfactory service. They conducted a survey with two types of participants: customers and human resource managers in service organisations. The study shows that frontline service personnel need to have both technical and social interactions skills.

Research in the service management and marketing areas indicates that frontline personnel gain knowledge through experiences with many types of customers and situations. Frontline personnel use customer profiles to simplify their task by classifying customers based on their similarities (Sujan et al., 1988; Weitz et al., 1986). A case study on frontline personnel suggests that they use visual and auditory cues to determine the behavioural approach most suitable for the type (Bettencourt & Gwinner, 1996). The case study elaborates these cues as: “customer-provided cues or characteristics such as speech attributes, mannerisms, dress and demographic variables such as age and gender” (p. 7). During encounters, frontline personnel pay attention to these cues to

determine which group this customer belongs to and to monitor customers’ reactions to their social interaction approach. These cues are not easily described to others and difficult to articulate:

Visual and auditory experience is difficult to describe because language abstracts from the particulars of experience, leaving out much of its informational value and emotional impact. Similarly, some knowledge can be

49 described as bodily skill and involves our sensory awareness of our own bodies

as well as brain signals of which we are not fully conscious. This sort of knowledge is hard if not impossible to articulate (Mooradian, 2005, p. 110)

It is difficult to articulate a detailed service experience because frontline personnel are focusing on words that customers use, the customers’ mannerisms and other stimuli, not on how they select and combine these stimuli to inform their own actions. Mooradian (2005) explains:

The fundamental idea is that we use ideas to understand or create new ideas, and because our focus must be on the creating and understanding we cannot be aware of all the ideas actively participating in the act of knowing. Sometimes these mental states are experiential, sensual and emotional. When that is the case, expression in a natural or formal language is difficult if not impossible. (Mooradian, 2005, p. 109)

Frontline personnel understand the situation but seem unable to explain what factors they combine to get to the conclusion. Therefore, knowledge in the service context is largely tacit.

So far this literature review has shown that knowledge in the service context is gained through daily interactions with customers. Knowledge in the service context is largely tacit, and thus it is difficult to communicate through the codified forms represented in manuals and formal in-class training. This has an effect on how frontline personnel learn about service encounters, as will be presented in the following section.

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