Dinner with the Bitners and Friends, Mesa, Arizona

After my day teaching at the Services Leadership Institute, Mary Jo and Rich Bitner hosted several couples for dinner at their home. (For those of you who do not know, I have known Mary Jo since 1989 when I took her Services Marketing class as an MBA student at ASU. She served on my Ph.D. dissertation committee, and eventually invited me to be a co-author with her and Valarie Zeithaml on their textbook: Services Marketing: Integrating Customer Focus Across the Firm. She is co-director of ASU's Center for Services Leadership and editor of the Journal of Service Research.) We had a nice final evening for our Arizona trip!

Candy, Dwayne, Amy Ostrom, Troy Buchanan (and Brody), Mary Jo & Rich Bitner, Ghislaine & Wolfgang Ulaga, and Johanna & Tuure Tuunanen.

Service Recovery Session at the Services Leadership Institute, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona

I was invited by Arizona State University to be one of the faculty for their 30th annual Services Leadership Institute.  This event brings together mid- to upper-level executives from service companies to discuss issues related to service management and marketing.  ASU promotes it as "an exclusive mini-MBA program on delivering on your customers' true expectations and competing through your service offerings."  My session was entitled "Service Recovery."

Discussing service failure and recovery.

In talking about Service Recovery, I discussed both "fixing the customer" and "fixing the problem."  I also suggested how a service guarantee might be used to do both.  (You may recall that I have offered a service guarantee in my classes both at BGSU and the University of Idaho.)

A very nice classroom in Mccord Hall in the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University.

For years a session on Service Recovery (by which we mean a firm's response to service delivery failure to resolve the situation for the customer) was delivered as part of the Services Leadership Institute by Steve Brown, the founding director of ASU's Center for Services Leadership. Steve was my mentor when I was a Ph.D. student at ASU, is a fellow basketball fan, can continues to be a friend and encourage me in my professional and personal life. Steve retired a couple of years ago, and decided not to be involved with SLI this year. Thus, an opportunity was created for me to be involved! Before the event, Steve and I had a chance to spend a couple of hours together while I was in the valley.

Dwayne and Steve Brown (wearing his Bowling Green t-shirt!)

Visit to the German Consulate in Chicago, Illinois

I was informed in Amsterdam, on our way back to the U.S., that I would need a work visa to return to Germany (and the E.U.).  So, after gathering up the necessary documents, Candy and I headed to Chicago to visit the German Consulate there.

A fun morning in Chicago!

On March 25, a day after we returned from our trip to Phoenix, we went to the Post Office in Perrysburg and found my passport, which included a work visa, waiting for me.  So, my journeys can continue!

I am ready to resume my sabbatical travels!

Organizational Frontlines Research Conference at Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida

16 hours after we arrived home I was on my way back to Detroit to fly to Tallahassee, Florida, for the second annual Organizational Frontlines Research Conference.  I was asked my the host, Mike Brady, to make a presentation.  So, I worked with Cecile Delcourt to present some early ideas on what we refer to as "bad news encounters."

Just after my "bad news" presentation.

The opening slide of my presentation.

I got a chance to walk around campus at one of the breaks...it is a nice campus and reminds me in many ways of Arizona State University, my alma mater.

A postcard kind of picture!