Productivity, quality and relationship marketing in service operations

The purpose of this article is to draw the reader’s attention to service productivity and its connection to service quality and eventually to profits. In service operations the customer plays an active role in influencing productivity and quality. Furthermore, contemporary companies are networks, not delimited hierarchies, and the productivity and quality issues affect all members of a network, not just the provider and the customer. This is clear from the new developments in relationship marketing and imaginary (virtual) organizations. In order to assess the financial outcome, the concept of return on relationships is introduced based on the notions of intellectual capital and the balanced scorecard. The article ends with challenging questions as well as recommendations for practising managers.