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Jennifer E. Rowley: Head, School of Management and Social Sciences, Edge Hill University College, Ormskirk, UK
Introduction
As the study of the service experience within a wide range of service environments has developed, there has been an increasing recognition that customers' satisfaction is often dependent upon their direct or indirect interactions as they share the service facility's physical environment. Customer-to-customer interaction can either enhance or impoverish the service experience. For example, a kind word or a pleasant smile from a fellow customer may make the service experience more enjoyable, whereas rowdy and obnoxious behaviour is likely to have the opposite effect. Indeed, in educational environments such as classes and other in-campus locations, students may often view student-to-student contact as a welcome secondary objective. In addition, tutors have long recognized that student-to-student interaction can be a valuable tool in supporting effective learning.
Since customer-to-customer interaction may significantly affect customer satisfaction and thereby the likelihood of a return visit, it is important for service managers to be sensitive to customer-to-customer relationships, and the behaviours that strengthen and weaken these relationships. More specifically, tutors need to appreciate what can be done to manage or positively influence the way in which students affect one another and the mechanisms by which they can support one another's experience of higher education.
This article reviews the concepts associated with customer compatibility management. Specifically, it reviews the roles involved in customer compatibility management proposed by Pranter and Martin[1] and considers their applicability to customer compatibility management in the student learning experience in higher education.
The article takes a broad perspective on the student experience of higher education, in keeping with a total service perspective rather than focusing specifically on the learning experience in the sense of formal learning in a specifically tutor-managed environment. This perspective is regarded as appropriate since there is considerable evidence that the "ethos of the student environment" does have an impact on student achievement (seee.g. [2]).
Customer-to-customer interaction in higher education
Student-to-student interactions may take place in higher education in a variety of different contexts, for example:
- classroom - including lecture, groupwork, etc.;
- student assignments - individual or group;
- coffee bar/dining room;
- library;
- social events and clubs;
- halls of residence;
- IT workshop;