Today's consumer has different options when it comes to engaging their favorite brand. Using just one device—a smart phone—customers can use voice, text and video to complain, or compliment the organization for a job well done. This technology offers many opportunities for interaction. This interaction can then be mined for valuable information using data analysis to provide proactive customer service. It is therefore essential to have members in the organization understand the full potential of this technology. This requires learning institutions to develop curriculums with this technology so students can enter the workforce knowledgeably.
HEC Montréal, one of Canada’s leading business schools with over a hundred years of experience, has launched a new Chair in Service Marketing and Customer Experience to be instructed by Associate Professor Yany Grégoire.
The Chair was established on June 1, 2014 to develop research and service marketing and customer experience at the school by cooperating with external researchers, students and members of the marketing department. According to the school, the long-term objective is to establish an international center of research excellence in this field through regular contributions to prominent journals.
"The scope of the Chair’s mission is large to allow the inclusion of many collaborators and thus produce at HEC Montréal the best research possible in those fields, which have grown greatly in importance over the last 20 years. We have all the ingredients to accomplish that goal: vision, leadership, expertise, and talent," said Professor Grégoire.
The Chair will have two priorities as it continues to develop aspects in which consumers and organizations will be interacting today and in the future:
The first priority is going to focus on understanding conflicts such as customer revenge and online complaints; the effect of direct and indirect revenge on the well-being of consumers; how the way to end a customer relationship can affect the rejection; intelligence tactics; and online resolutions. This will be followed with a resolution method on how to repair a relationship after a conflict, how to bring consumers to forgive, the non-linear effect between compensation and satisfaction.
Additionally the Chair will seek the input of collaborators to integrate high-impact topics as part of the continuing research into this field with qualitative research, Tech3Lab, physiological measures, sponsorships in services and more.
"Thanks to this consolidated expertise, HEC Montréal will assuredly be in a position to train the next generation of highly qualified students, build an international network, and become a key player in the fields of service marketing and customer experience," added Professor Grégoire.
Professor Grégoire holds a PhD in Marketing from University of Western Ontario (Ivey) and an MSc from HEC Montréal. He joined HEC Montreal in 2010 and before that he taught at Washington State University, where he received awards for his teaching and research. He is a member of the HEC Montréal’s Research Council and has published papers in some of the most prestigious academic journals in the world including, MIT Sloan Management Review; Journal of Marketing; Journal of Consumer Psychology; Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science; Journal of Retailing; and Personnel Psychology.