THE SPECIFICATION of HIGH INTERACTION SERVICE PROCESSES

This paper reports a study of the nature of specifications in high interaction service processes. It builds on two exploratory case studies of airline companies to describe the elements that are used to define and control service processes. The findings reveal the service specification as a combination of several elements in different degrees of explicitness and in a range of shapes. The combination of the specification elements appears to be shaped by contextual variables, namely the process size and the degree of customer interaction.