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Introduction
Moment of Truth can be defined as any occasion the customer interacts with, or is exposed to, any organizational output which leads to the formation of an impression of the organization (Buttle, 2009).
The term of "moment of truth" was firstly introduced by Richard Norman, a management thinker. However, the person who made the term famous and especially important in service management is Jan Carlzon (1987), the CEO of Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) back then.
According to the definition, we can easily deduce the importance of it. For any company or industry, especially the service industry, all the issues lead to the customers, which is the source of customer loyalty, market share and annual profit, any numbers that matter for the company. Jan Carlzon helps SAS to build up a new image of customer driven by applying the moment of truth. Just as he said, “We used to think our biggest assets were aircraft, overhaul stations and technical resources. But we have only one real asset, and that is a satisfied customer prepared to come back to SAS and pay for our costs once more."
What Influence the Moment of Truth?
As we have known, the moment of truth are the moment that customer judge the service they receive by any specific form and form the impression for the service then for the company. The factors that influence the customer to judge include two kinds: the former expectation and the real interaction.
Former Expectation
The former expectation is the impression from the customer before they actually purchase or receive the delivery of the products and service.
There are four elements to shape up the former expectation: external communication, the personal needs, the former experience to use the similar product or service, the Word-of-Mouth (Zeithaml & Bitner, 2000).
External communication
External communication, in this case, is the virtual impression that customer get from the company before they purchase the products and service. The main modes of external communication are the advertising and the related promotion activity. The advertising transfers the information about the product, service and the company to the customer over and over again by TV commercial, newspaper, radio and post. All those information that customer get help them to form the first impression about the quality, price and other characteristics of the products. For example, the brochure from the tourism company usually has this beautiful couple drinking wine in the glory of the beautiful sunset. It gives the potential customer the expectation for a beautiful and romantic trip, maybe with luxury wine and tasteful food.
Personal needs
The different personal needs decide that they have different expectation for the products or service. There are tons of examples concerning the service in tourism industry. A business person, who travels half a year around the world, really cares about the punctuality, quality and convenience of the service from the travel agency. However, for a new married couple, they probably have different needs, pursuing for romance and unique of the service. When it comes to an old couple, who finally retire and get time to travel, they may want comfort and quiet more than anything else. If those three group of customers choose the same travel agency and get the exactly service package with the same delivered quality, they may have a totally different evaluation for the service. That is because they have different expectations for the service, which are formed by the different personal needs.
Former experience
It is easily to understand the influence of the former experience to purchase the similar product or service on the current one. Before the judgment, all the customers have the standards to form the impression, subconsciously or purposely. The standards are mainly formed by the former experience to use the similar products or service. If the customer has a very high qualified former experience, he or she is inclined to have a high standard for the current one. As a same reason, he or she is easier to be disappointed by the moderate experience. Compared to the former extraordinary, moderate becomes the new "unacceptable".
Word-of-Mouth
Word-of-mouth can be seen as the internal communication among customers, the peer of the external communication we mentioned above. It is common and understandable for the customer to inquire the information about the product or the service before they actually buy it. And the information usually comes from the person that the customer knows in reality, in most times, friends, actually. They trust the information source. Thus they trust the information. Therefore, the opinion from others has more influence for the customer to make the decision of purchase. Especially for the service industry, such as the tourism company, the recommendation from old customer is a very effective and important way to explore new customer and gain market share.
Actual Interaction
According to the definition we mentioned above, the moment of truth is any moment that the company interacts with the customer. The interaction between customer and company can be seen as the “service encounter" (Czepiel, Solomon, & Surprenant, 1985). Service encounter is the contact the customer has with the service staff, where the supply meets the demand. However, with the increasing importance of the service industry, the customers are increasing irritated, frustrated and dissatisfied by the individual service encounters (Bitner, 1990). So it is necessary to take a closer look at the service industry with the research on moment of truth.
It can be performed by any forms of interaction with the company, which can be defined as the touchpoint in customer experience.
Touchpoint
Touchpoint, literally, is the place that the customers get contact with the company's products, services, communications, places, people, processes or technologies, no matter virtually or actually (Buttle, 2009). The moment of truth occurs at touchpoints. In this way, any interaction in any form can be a touchpoint, which mainly includes retail store, service centre, promotion activity, advertising, call and email. However, to utilize the limited resource in the company, every company need to identify the main touchpoint to gain the customer loyalty and market share. The main touchpoint in different industries can be very diverse both in the number and variety (Buttle, 2009). For example, for a restaurant, the most important and impressive touchpoints are related to the taste and cleanness while for a bank, the main touchpoint may can be identified as branch bank and the internet bank.
However, in this report, it is complicated to decide the main touchpoints of the tourism service. The tourism service usually not only concerns the tourism company or the travel agency; it also concerns the subcontracting organizations (Laws, 2004). For a regular travel package service, it usually includes the transport, accommodation and sometime food. So in this circumstance, the moment of truth is not only decided by the interaction between the customers and the tourism company. It also depends on the interaction between the customers and the transport company, the hotel and the restaurant. A perfect travel plan by the tourism company can be totally destroyed by the delay of the flight or the salty meal.
How to Creative Positive Moment of Truth?
With the crucial importance of the moment of truth, there is no argument for the company trying their best to create the positive moment of truth. No matter how complicated the service, there are always two parts of the participant to realize the deal, the customer and the company. Therefore, there are two perspectives to work on creating the positive moment of truth. For the customers, they should be provided with specific service they need with the right expectation. For the company, they should improve the service and guarantee that the service is delivered properly. The recommendations are presented specifically as below. Especially for the service industry, such as the tourism company, the recommendation from old customer is a very effective and important way to explore new customer and gain market share.
More Specific Customer Classification
With the development of the service industry, especially in the tourism industry, more and more participants join the competition. The customer has plenty of options to purchase the service. So standing out from other competitors is the key issue for the tourism company to survive in such increasingly intense competitive market. The more specific customer classification provides a clear target for the company to pursue. They can utilize the limited resource into some business area, and be expert on them. The limited business range narrow down the customer. But it also guarantees the quality of the service, to certain extent, which further guarantees the customer satisfaction and loyalty. If a travel agency tries to provide general service, it will end up with disaster. Besides, with the increasing options, the customer becomes picky and sophisticated. They are inclined to choose a service with a specialty to match the requirement.
Proper External Communication
The advertising, as a mass communication or direct communication to the customer, has the purpose to inform or persuade the members of a particular audience to purchase the products or form a positive impression of the identified products or organization (Shimp, 2000). However, the external communication has to be proper. It is common that the external communication promote the product or service with beautification. But it cannot be too excessive. The expectation that the company gives to the customer has to be deliverable. In other words, there cannot be too much difference between the expectation transformed by the advertising and the actual service delivered. Otherwise, there is not just the customer dissatisfaction. The company also loses the reputation, which for a service organization is very crucial. For instance, a travel agency promises every customer with a super luxury trip experience in the advertising. However, the customer cannot really experience it because of the budget limit. The opinion that the real experience is nothing like the advertising can exaggerate the disappointment of the customer.#p#分页标题#e#
Improvement of Service Provider
No matter how unique and special the service design is and how successful the external communication is, the service that is actually delivered to the customers matter more. So after all, it comes to the staff that interacts with customers. A lot of researchers deduce the same conclusion that identifies the crucial role of people in the organization (Albrecht & Zemck, 1985).
However, with the special features in the tourism industry, the people that relate to the service quality are not just the employee from the tourism company; they also relate to the people who work for the subcontracting organization. In this manner, there are two related groups of people for a tourism company to improve the moment of truth, the employee working for the company and the subcontracting partner.
Reliable subcontracting partner
The tourism company is the client for the subcontracting organization such as the hotel and transport carrier. At the same time, they are also the service provider for the final customer who consumes the service. The double roles of the tourism company require it to think from two different perspectives. In this circumstance, the tourism company needs to think about the cost to keep the budget for the company operation and also need to think about the profit from the customers. So a reliable subcontracting partner is very important for the company. When they choose the subcontracting partner, they need to do an exhaustive research and comparison. And a regular evaluation for the subcontracting partner is a very good way to guarantee the quality of the service.
Employee empowerment
The personal contact of staff that provides the service has the strongest influence on the overall customer satisfaction (Crosby & Stephens, 1987). Jan Carlzon (1987) concludes that the customers form their impression for the service at the first 15 seconds that they interact with the service providers. So the employee, especially the service provider who directly interacts with customer, is very important element for the company to gain the positive moment of truth.
The concept of empowerment is promoted to stimulate the workers' potential. By the empowerment, the employee has more freedom to operate the work and they are also increasing responsible for their actions (Keenoy, 1990).
First of all, the empowerment encourages the employee to be creative. With the increasing intense competition in tourism service industry, the service that can delight the customer is not just concerning "what", but more important, "how". The empowerment authorizes and encourages the employee to deliver the service in their own way. The personal style service is highly in accordance with the service requirement of individuation nowadays.
Secondly, the employee empowerment also can help the company to improve the strategy and policy. The service with creation does not follow the same pattern any more. The diverse service patterns can examine that whether the company policy is exhaustive and humanistic. At the same time, the management in the company should pay more attention on the employees' opinion. As Jan Carlzon (1987) mentioned in his book Moment of Truth, he was forced to adjust the company system and policy as the CEO of the SAS Airline. He said the company's strategy and policy should support and assist the staff to service the customer better. If the service provider wants to service the customer better only by violating the company policy or rules, the policy and rules should be changed. The company should support the occasions that the employee try to satisfy or even to surprise the customer with exceptional service, by the service itself and the way the service is delivered.
Besides, the empowerment makes the employee feel respected and valued by the company. Then they are committed themselves more to the company. They do not just work for a company; they work for the company. So they are more willing to contribute their potential and productivity, which leads to an exceptional service quality and further leads to the customer satisfaction and increased profit.
In addition, the commitment of the employee to the company guarantees the employment loyalty. The employee loyalty is very important for the company because it is very costly to hire and train a new employee for the company. Especially for the tourism industry, the most of the work content relate to face the customer. The work usually does not follow a regular pattern. So it requires more than just diploma. It requires the work experience to deal with customers. It takes time for the new employee to be expert in it. During this time period, the loss caused by the unsatisfied service may be even more than the cost to hire and train a new employee. So the employee empowerment can reduce the cost for the company, and at the same time explore the profit source.
Service Evaluation and Recovery
As what is mentioned before, the tourism service is a service industry. There is no regular and settle pattern to operate the service. The highly involvement of people, no matter the service provider or the customer, makes it more complicated. Therefore, it is inevitable to make some mistakes. And because nowadays the customer has more travel experience, they keep updating the requirement for the tourism service. So it is very necessary for the service provider to evaluate and improve the work. And if there is any mistake, it requires a fast response system to recover the mistake.
Service evaluation
The evaluation can reflect the opinion of the customer about the service. It also can provide the company some advice about the new needs of the customers. The company can modify the service according to those evaluations. And the evaluation system can make the customer feel more respectable and valued by the company, which is also a method to improve the positive moment of truth.
Service recovery
According the research, usually the customer can tolerate the service mistake at the first place. However, they are very unhappy if the company denies taking responsibility for the mistake and recovering it effectively and immediately. For the customer, the service mistake is caused by various kinds of expected issues. But if the company cannot modify the mistake, it demonstrates the wrong attitude of the company, which is the real deadly weakness. The failure to recover the mistake loses the customer's positive evaluation. What is worse is that the bad reputation loses the potential market by the word-of-mouth, as it is mentioned before. The service recovery system can help the company to correct the mistake that has already been made and give the customer second chance to form the positive moment of truth.
Conclusion
Every interaction between the customer and company is a moment of truth. Every moment of truth contributes to the final impression and judgment of the customer on the quality of the service and the company. So for the company, it is crucial to introduce the moment of truth to the system, both the management and the frontline. By adjusting the elements that form the moment of truth, internally and externally, the company can develop itself with high customer satisfaction and loyalty. Thus, it can survive in any intense competition.
Reference
Albrecht, K. & Zemke, R. (1985) Service America: doing business in the new economy. I llinois: Dow Jones-Irwin
Bitner, J.M (1990) Evaluating service encounters: the effects of physical surroundings and employee responses. Journal of Marketing, 54: 69-82.
Buttle, F. (2009) Customer relationship management: concepts and technologies. Oxford (MA): Elsevier Ltd.
Carlzon, J. (1987) Moment of truth. New York: Harper Collins Publisher
Crosby, L.A. & Stephens, N. (1987) Effects of relationship marketing on satisfaction, retention, and prices in the life insurance industry. Journal of Marketing Research, XXIV: 404-11.
Czepiel, A.J., Solomon, R.M., & Surprenant, F.C. (Ed) (1985) The service encounter: managing employee/customer interaction in service business (advances/retailing series). MA: Lexington Books.
Laws, E. (2004) Improving tourism and hospitality services. Wallingford: CABI Publishing.
Keenoy, T. (1990) HRM: a case of the wolf in sheep's clothing. Personnel Review 19(2): 3-9.
Shimp, T. A. (2000). Advertising, promotion and supplemental aspects of integrated marketing communications. Fort Worth: The Dryden Press
Zeithaml, A.V. and Bitner, J.M (2000), Services Marketing, New York: McGraw Hill,
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