Customer Satisfaction with Electronic Service Encounters

Customer relationship management has become an integral component for online service providers such online book retailers, online stock brokers, online bankers, and so forth. This paper investigated the aspects of individual online transactions (i.e., electronic service encounters) that are most likely to satisfy customers, thereby increasing the likelihood of building and maintaining relationships with customers. For this study, 513 respondents reported behaviors, perceptions, beliefs, events, features, characteristics, attributes, situations, and so forth that expressed respondents' perceptions of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with electronic service encounters. Content analysis of these customer-reported incidents with online service providers yielded 3 meta-categories, 6 categories, and 33 sub-categories. The taxonomy developed in this study therefore offered an insight into the specific events that contributed to the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of customers when they engaged in transactions with online service providers.