MANAGING THE

CUSTOMER MIX
Managing the
Customer Mix
 Service Customers and Their Behavior
• Customer mix
–Array of people of differing
• ages,
• genders,
• socioeconomic backgrounds,
• knowledge or experience,
• ethnicity, and so on
–who patronize a service organization.
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 Customer-to-Customer Interactions

• Customer-to-customer
interactions are often
challenged by crowding and
long waits.

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 Customer-Employee Interactions
• Friendly Interactions
– The optimal interaction.
• Unfriendly Interactions
– Unfriendly interactions can be highly
disruptive.
• Too Friendly Interactions
– May delay the service provided to
subsequent customers.
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 Customer Training Guidelines
• Virtually impossible to satisfy all customers with
the same service delivery.
• Significant differences in individuals’ evaluations
of other customers’ behaviors are often rooted in
easily observable characteristics.
• Be alert for a tendency among some customers to
be less inhibited when they are out of town or
among strangers.

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 Customer Training Guidelines (cont’d)
• Service organizations that attract a diverse
customer base should be wary of some customers’
tendency to criticize foreigners.
• Service organizations should attempt to encourage
random acts of kindness among customers.
• Methods for improving customer-to-customer
relationships are needed.

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 Customer Compatibility Management
• The practice of selecting the
appropriate customer mix in an effort
to encourage satisfying customer-to-
customer relationships when
customers are likely to interact yet
have different backgrounds or reasons
for using the service.
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 Customer “B”
• Other customers are a component of most
service experiences.
• Captured in models of service encounters
as
– Customer B (Service Model)
– Audience (Service Theater Model)
– Participants (7 P’s Model)

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 Managing Customer Rage
• Customer rage –
–The expression of mild to extreme
anger about some aspect of the
service experience.

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