A PSO-based intelligent service dispatching mechanism for customer expectation management

In the era of experience economy, service providers have to provide customers with high quality service experience in order to attract more customers and achieve higher customer satisfaction. Managing customer expectation is a critical approach for service providers to consider. Although customer expectation has been discussed across different research disciplines, to our knowledge, there is still no systematical and feasible way to apply customer expectation management into real environments. This study attempts to establish an intelligent service dispatching mechanism by using particle swarm optimization for customer expectation management. This mechanism can help service providers design and deliver satisfactory service experience to customers. In order to evaluate the effectiveness and robustness of this mechanism, this study employs micro- and macro-simulation experiments to confer and analyze its performance. The simulation results show service providers can gain benefit and raise customer satisfaction by managing customer expectation during service experience delivery. Meanwhile, customers can also receive memorable experiences and have positive responses to service providers and other customers. Consequently, a high performance ecosystem within service providers and customers can be formed.

► In this study we propose a PSO-based intelligent mechanism to manage customer expectation for better service experiences.
► We conduct four simulation experiments to test the proposed mechanism.
► The simulation scenario is applied into an exhibition service environment.
► We find that customer expectation is a key to influence customer service experiences in real time service contexts.
► We conclude that appropriate customer expectation management will result in a high performance ecosystem during service experience delivery.