I am grateful to my colleagues at DePaul University, Department of Management, especially Professors Scott Young, James Belohlav, and Ray Coye, for providing me encouragement and invaluable suggestions. My special “thank you” goes to Dipak Jain, Dean, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, for planting the seed and providing invaluable suggestions to focus on Service performance issues. Comments and facilitation of cases by Professor Dean Schroeder of Valparaiso University and Pavlo Schremeta, Dean of Kiev Mohyla Business School, Ukraine, are highly appreciated. Comments from Professors Robert Rubin, Erich Dierdorff, and Scott Sampson are also acknowledged. I would also like to acknowledge students Umesh Shahi, Arthur Mrzinski, and Pei-Ning Chang for helping me with the topical research.

I also would like to thank Infosys leadership for sharing information about performance measurements.

And I am grateful to my wife, Anjali, and daughter, Keya, for their love and support in this endeavor.

—Rajesh Tyagi, Assistant Professor, Logistics and Operations Management HEC, Montréal

I would like to thank my coauthor, Rajesh Tyagi, for his teamwork and making the writing a collaborative experience. Special thanks to my colleague Arvin Sri for his valuable support in research and review throughout the project.

My thanks to my family and friends for their continual support in writing this book. Special thanks to Dean Spitzer and Jahn Ballard for their active support in discussing service performance measures. I am grateful to Jim Spohrer for promoting Service Science.

—Praveen Gupta, President, Accelper Consulting, ASQ Fellow, Six Sigma Master Black Belt

Finally, the authors greatly appreciate Shellie Tate for excellent editorial support; and Executive Editor Jim Boyd and his staff for making this book a reality.