2012 Awards for Excellence

2012 Awards for Excellence

2012 Awards for Excellence

Article Type: 2012 Awards for Excellence From: The TQM Journal, Volume 25, Issue 1.

The following article was selected for this year's Outstanding Paper Award for The TQM Journal

“Analysing the preferred characteristics of frontline employees dealing with customer complaints: a cross-national Kano study”

Thorsten Gruber, Ibrahim Abosag, Alexander E. Reppel and Isabelle Szmigin

AbstractPurpose – This paper seeks to use the Kano model to gain a deeper understanding of attributes of effective frontline employees dealing with customer complainants in personal interactions. Previous research revealed that excitement factors deteriorate to basic factors over time. This research aims to investigate whether the same phenomenon holds true for attributes of service employees.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected using Kano questionnaires from 272 respondents with complaining experience in the UK and Saudi Arabia, these being two countries at different stages of service sector development.Findings – The analysis of the Kano questionnaires for the UK reveals that complaining customers take the contact employee's ability to listen carefully for granted. The Kano results for Saudi Arabia clearly indicate that complaining customers are (still) easier to delight than their UK counterparts.Research limitations/implications – Even though the study has a sample size similar to several existing Kano studies, future research studies could still use larger probability samples that represent the broader (complaining) consumer population in the selected countries.Practical implications – If companies know what complaining customers expect, frontline employees may be trained to adapt their behaviour to their customers' underlying expectations. For this purpose, the paper gives several suggestions to managers to improve active complaint handling and management.Originality/value – The study adds to the understanding of effective complaint handling. The findings are the first to show that employee factors that are performance factors in a highly developed service economy can still delight customers in a less developed service economy.

This article originally appeared in Volume 23 Number 2, 2011, The TQM Journal

The following articles were selected for this year's Highly Commended Award

“Champions in transition: the role of process orientation”

Uma Kumar, Kayvan Miri-Lavassani, Bahar Movahedi and, Vinod Kuma

This article originally appeared in Volume 23 Number 3, 2011, The TQM Journal

“Identifying ideas of attractive quality in the innovation process”

Lars Witell, Martin Löfgren and Anders Gustafsson

This article originally appeared in Volume 23 Number 1, 2011, The TQM Journal

“No panaceas for organizational diseases, but better knowledge and systems thinking”

Tito Conti

This article originally appeared in Volume 23 Number 3, 2011, The TQM Journal

Outstanding Reviewer

Professor Yu-Cheng LeeChung-Hua University, Taiwan (Republic of China) City College, Greece