Relational quality in service encounters

Abstract The purpose of this exploratory study was to determine how the organizational context in which service encounters take place affects employee interactions with customers, and resulting guest satisfaction. Guest contact employees of a chain of hotels were surveyed on their perceptions of a number of organizational and individual characteristics. Their responses were correlated with guest satisfaction ratings for the hotels in which they worked. Stress related factors including bureaucratic climate, and to a lesser extent, overload, were negatively correlated to guest satisfaction ratings. Employee evaluations of service quality strongly correlated with guest satisfaction ratings.

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