The Challenge of Globalisation for Managing Service Encounters

A major aspect of globalisation is the increasingly international character of many services. This trend has created a number of challenges for service managers. These include designing and marketing global products; managing a culturally diverse workforce; and managing cross-cultural interactions between employees and customers and between customers themselves. The theme of the cross-cultural service encounter is the focus of this article.

The term ‘service encounter’ is defined and its importance in service management explained. Then the increased complexity of the service encounter in cross-cultural service contexts is explored. A range of research contributions concerning the cross-cultural service encounter is presented. Attention is given both to employee-to-customer (E2C) and customer–to-customer (C2C) encounters. Approaches for managing cross-cultural service encounters are put forward. A number of suggestions for future research are made.