Service quality and quality development
Quality in services has to do with satisfying needs and meeting the realistic expectations of customers, employees, and owners — whose interests are often in conflict. Areas of research include customer dissatisfaction and complaints-handling, quality measurement, and service guarantees. We also investigate such questions as how quality adds value in customers’ perceptions of services, and how feelings and experiences influence customers’ attitudes and behaviors.

Work environment and competence issues
Many of our projects are concerned with new organizational structures and their effects on employees. Among other things, we study interactions between customers and employees in the service encounter, deregulation and its effects on employees in conjunction with the introduction of new organizational structures, and communication and dialogue between managers and employees in groups and within the organization as a whole. In one of our programs, we study the purchaser–provider model in the business sector. Another area of our research is concerned with the working conditions of self-employed persons and small businesses.

Service development and customer involvement
Businesses and public-sector organizations spend considerable sums of money on the development of new services. However, research shows that a large proportion of these new services fail. At CTF, we study various aspects of service development, including communication, organization, procedures, and effects. We are also involved in the development of methods to identify the types of services that are in demand, the factors that contribute to success, and how to avoid failure. Our research focuses on the customer, because we believe that the customer’s perspective is vital to success in the service-development process.

Customer satisfaction and customer experience
Because services are intangible, it is difficult for customers to evaluate them before consumption. It is therefore important for service organizations to develop indicators of customer satisfaction and customer experience. This area of research is concerned with understanding, developing, and applying measurements in ways that can provide an organization with reliable data on which to base decisions. This area of research includes the concept of ‘customer orientation’ — that is, whether an organization is focused on responding to customers’ preferences. Although many organizations measure customer satisfaction, it is apparent that they often fail to apply their findings to improve operations in accordance with customers’ preferences.

Service concept and added value through service
The term ‘service logic’ refers to the ability of a firm to recognize aspects of their offerings as being ‘services’, and then to add value to these services for customers in various ways. Our research focuses on the economic and social implications of such ‘service logic’ in the private, public, and voluntary sectors. Among other things, we study the ethical and environmental consequences of the value-creation process.