An Investigation of Customer Experiences with Professional Services

This paper investigates the differences in the perceived customer experiences (service quality, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions) with different professional services (accounting, financial, legal, medical, pharmaceutical, real estate, and staffing agencies). This study reveals that customers' service quality perception may not translate directly or equally into their behavioral intentions in different types of professional services. Second, it appears that customers have more memorable experiences with certain professional services such as CPA and pharmaceutical services than with the other studied professional services. However, despite these differential memorable experiences, this study does not support the existence of any significant differences among the different types of professional services in customers' propensity to switch services when there is service failure. This presents a challenge for professional service providers, especially for those services (e.g., staffing agencies) where changing providers will not cost the customer as much as it would with other types of professional service providers.