Investigating the Service Friendship, Communicational Skills and Personality Traits in High-Contact Service

Abstract

Service providing by customers’ preserving and satisfaction is one of the basic tools of service organizations survival in today’s competitive environment.  The high-contact service is not an exception of this principle. One of the fields which can be used remarkably in order to preserve and satisfy the customer in these kinds of service is the service friendship between the service provider and the customers. In the present study, the relationship among the customers’ Personality traits, communicational skills of the high-contact service providers, and the service friendship has been investigated. The sample of the study includes 345 customers of counseling and medical service of Isfahan which 191 were females, and 154 were males. The effect of the extroversion variables and sociability on the communicational skills and communicational skills effects on the friendship service, and also the effect of the friendship service on the satisfaction and anticipation of future interaction have been investigated. The data analysis has been done using Lisrel 8.5.  The results indicate that the extroversion variables have affected the communicational skills, the communicational skills affected the friendship service, friendship service affected the satisfaction, and satisfaction affected the anticipation of the future interaction in a significant positive way. However, the significance effect of the sociability on the communicational skills and the friendship service effects on the anticipation of the future interaction have been rejected.