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Elsa Lai-Ping Leong Koljonen: Elsa Lai-Ping Leong Koljonen is a Commodity Manager at Intel Corporation, Chandler, Arizona, USA.
Richard A. Reid: Richard A. Reid is Professor of Operations Management at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.
Introduction
Yung and Wong Solicitors is a small and recently-established law firm in Hong Kong specialising in patents and trade mark applications, commercial contracts, and real estate transactions. It consists of three partners, three article clerks who are solicitors-in-training, three secretaries, two junior clerks, and two receptionists. For the most part, clients from the partners' previous practices provide the main customer base. Under the laws of Hong Kong, lawyers are not allowed to actively solicit new business through traditional marketing approaches such as advertising. Therefore, new clients are mainly generated by referrals from current customers. As a result, customer satisfaction is of paramount importance to the new firm's survival and future success.
Expansion through repeat business depends on the firm's ability to provide its existing client base with perceived service excellence. If a new customer is satisfied with the service encounter, the probability of a return visit and/or a positive referral is significantly enhanced (Lewis and Booms, 1983; Gale and Russell, 1987; Heskett et al., 1990; Zeithaml et al., 1996). As a matter of fact, the effect of a customer's perception of the service performance quality on his/her satisfaction or willingness to do repeat business is so strong that Zeithaml and her colleagues (1990) defined "service" as the essence of services marketing. It is said that apart from the typical four Ps of marketing (i.e. product, place, promotion and price), the most important competitive weapon in a service business is the fifth "P" - performance. It is the performance of the service that separates a service firm from others. It is also the performance of the service that creates true customers who will buy more, be more loyal and use the firm again, and spread favourable word of mouth (Zeithaml et al., 1990).
Since current and future organisational health is dependent on having highly satisfied, or better yet, delighted customers, it is important for this firm to continuously monitor and improve their performance as perceived by their clients, especially those visiting the firm for the first...