2007 Volume 58 Issue 2 Pages 157-165
The authors propose a method for improving service operations from the viewpoint of promoting correspondence between customers and service-providing corporations. The paper distinguishes the correspondence of various types of information and physical objects into unavoidable correspondence, correspondence that increases the customer satisfaction level, and correspondence that increases the service provider satisfaction level. Based on these distinctions, we propose a method to design the most efficient operation procedures, comprised solely of unavoidable correspondence, and to identify wasteful correspondence existing in current operation procedures from the viewpoint of gap between the two procedures. We then paper propose a framework to identify various alternative methods for increasing the satisfaction level of both customers and service providers respectively, and to realize these alternatives in the form of correspondence between customers and service providers. The proposed method of this hierarchical improvement framework is then applied to an actual case of a leasing operation at a consumer financing company, and the validity of the proposed method is discussed.
