Title
Customer Efficiency, Channel Usage, and Firm Performance in Retail Banking
Abstract
Innovations in technology and service design have increasingly enabled firms to incorporate self-service technology to augment or substitute for “traditional” employee-provided service channels. Although it is clear that self-service can reduce cost, less is known about how customers utilize self-service channels in a multichannel service delivery system and the resulting impact on firm performance. An important aspect of service operations is that customers are coproducers of the service. Thus, the performance of the delivery system and customers' use of service channels can be affected by customers' own efficiency or productivity in service coproduction (customer efficiency). In this paper, we utilize prior theoretical frameworks in service operations and economics to hypothesize relationships among customer characteristics (especially coproduction efficiency), channel utilization, and firm performance. We then test these hypotheses using panel data from a large retail bank. Overall, we find that higher customer efficiency in self-service channels is associated with greater profitability and has a complex relationship with customer retention and product utilization.
Year
DOI
Venue
2007
10.1287/msom.1060.0135
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
Keywords
Field
DocType
firm performance,retail banking,customer characteristic,service channel,coproduction efficiency,service coproduction,employee-provided service channel,service operation,customer efficiency,channel usage,self-service channel,multichannel service delivery system,service design,panel data,service delivery system,profitability,service delivery,customer retention
Customer retention,Economics,Service level objective,Service quality,Customer to customer,Microeconomics,Customer advocacy,Service level requirement,Customer profitability,Industrial organization,Marketing,Customer Service Assurance
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
9
4
1523-4614
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
27
1.13
5
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Mei Xue1622.25
Lorin M. Hitt22426223.11
Patrick T. Harker321758.10