The Influence Of Internal Customer Service Experience In Public Universities In Malaysia
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Date
2015-10
Authors
Mamat, Mazlina
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
Growing competition among Malaysian public universities makes it imperative to understand the important role of internal customer service experience in today’s higher education service environment. As a pillar of the university, Academic Affairs Department (AAD) is entrusted to meet the needs and demands of its customers especially the academic staff of the university. In service organizations, like public universities, employee (academic staff) service experience directly correlates with student satisfaction and university performance. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the factors that influence academic staff’s service experience. Hence, the primary focus of this study is to examine the relationship of service environment factors and situational factors in influencing customer service experience of academic staff in Malaysian public universities. The study also assesses the moderating influence of self-efficacy on the relationships between the independent variables and the dependent variable. The research model hypothesized that service environment factors and situational factorshave significant impact on customer service experience. The study employed a quantitative research. The survey method was utilized and for data collection, a self-administered questionnaire was constructed to gather data from 454 Malaysian public universities’ academic staff. For sampling technique, proportionate stratified random sampling was utilized in this study. Descriptive analysis, factor analysis, correlation analysis, and hierarchical regression analysis were used to analyze the data. All research questions and objectives were answered by performing appropriate inferential statistical analysis, hierarchical regression analysis. The findings revealed significant relationships between service environment factor (personal interaction encounter) and situational factors (customer involvement, familiarity, perceived market orientation, internal and external locus of control) and customer service experience. However, it also showed that service environment factor (physical environment encounter) does not have a significant influence on customer service experience. The results also revealed that self-efficacy only moderates the relationship between physical environment factor and customer service experience. However, the results do not support the moderating effect of self-efficacy on the relationships between the other independent variables and the dependent variable. Overall, this study provided support for the importance of highlighting the service environment factors and the situational factors in managing academic staff’s customer service experience. The results offer several theoretical and practical implications to Malaysian public universities’ administrators, particularly the AAD and also to policy makers and other practitioners especially in designing effective customer service experience strategies. The limitations of the study and recommendations for future research were also addressed.
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Keywords
Customer service experience , Malaysian public universities