Guten Tag? Bonjour? Buon Giorno? Bun Di? Electronic Customer Service in the Swiss Hotel Industry

This exploratory research investigated the state of electronic customer service in Switzerland and how diffusion of innovations explains the responsiveness and quality of email replies by Swiss hoteliers. The research involved a typical room query sent to a random and stratified -- category, geographic location and linguistic region -- sample of 200 hotels. Based on the hotel responses, this study found that guests had less than one chance in ten of receiving a proper reply. The results suggest that the quality of a reply differs across hotel size, category, online relationship marketing tools and linguistic region. These same hotel characteristics as well as geographic region, however, showed no differences in responsiveness. Finally, hotels have an immediate opportunity for a competitive advantage by implementing basic email procedures.