Knut Kvale

Improving service quality through customer journey analysis

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework based on customer journeys for a structured portrayal of service delivery from the customer’s point of view. The paper also introduces customer journey analysis (CJA) for empirical investigation of individual service experiences in a multichannel environment. Design/methodology/approach The paper presents case studies for onboarding new customers on broadband services. CJA starts with modeling of the service process in terms of touchpoints. The individual customer journeys are reconstructed through methodological triangulation of interviews, diary studies, and process tracking. Findings The paper provides empirical insights into individual customer journeys. Four types of deviations during service delivery are identified: occurrence of ad hoc touchpoints, irregularities in the sequence of logically connected touchpoints, occurrence of failures in touchpoints, and missing touchpoints. CJA seems effective in revealing problematic and incoherent service delivery that may result in unfavorable customer experiences. Practical implications For a service company, the proposed framework may serve as a unifying language to ease cross-departmental communication and approach service quality in a systematic way. CJA discloses the gap between the planned and actual service delivery and can be used as a tool for service improvement. Originality/value The framework provides concepts, definitions, and a visual notation to structure and manage services in terms of customer journeys. CJA is a novel method for empirical studies of the service delivery process and the associated customer experience.

Organizational Transformation Through Service Design: The Institutional Logics Perspective

In this article, we provide in-depth insight into the process of adopting service design (SD) by a large service organization. We use an inductive interpretive approach and draw on rich longitudinal data collected in one of the world’s major telecommunication companies that undertook a series of SD initiatives to improve its innovation capability. We find that instead of merely bringing new services, SD has far-reaching consequences for organizations, prompting significant changes in the organizational mindset and routines. Building on the institutional logics perspective and acknowledging the role of individuals’ institutional work, we identify the macro-level and micro-level mechanisms of the organizational logic transformation that SD induces. Interestingly, the effects are bidirectional, as the organizational context has a considerable impact on SD as an innovation practice. As this study shows, managers and other practitioners can effectively overcome organizational hindrances to the adoption of SD by creating an SD-based corporate language, realigning key performance indicators, and facilitating learning and experimentation.

Multimodal Interfaces to Mobile Terminals - A Design-For-All Approach

Multimodal human-computer user interfaces are able to combine different input signals, extract the combined meaning from them, find requested information and present the response in the most appropriate format. Hence, a multimodal human-computer interface offers the users an opportunity to choose the most natural interaction pattern for the actual application and context of use. If the preferred mode fails in a certain context or task, users may switch to a more appropriate mode or they can combine modalities. Around thirty years ago Bolt presented the “Put That There” concept demonstrator, which processed speech in parallel with manual pointing during object manipulation (Bolt, 1980). Since then major advances have been made in automatic speech recognition (ASR) algorithms and natural language processing (NLP), in handwriting and gesture recognition, as well as in speed, processing power and memory capacity of computers. Today’s multimodal systems are capable of recognizing and combining a wide variety of signals such as speech, touch, manual gestures, gaze tracking, facial expressions, head and body movements. The response can be presented by e.g. facial animation in the form of human-like presentation agents on the screen in a multimedia system. These advanced systems need various sensors and a lot of processing power and memory. They are therefore best suited for interaction with computers and in kiosk applications, as demonstrated in e.g. (Oviatt, 2000); (Gustafson et al., 2000); (Wahlster, 2001); (Beskow, et al. 2002); (Karpov, 2006); (Smartkom, 2007). Modern mobile terminals are now portable computers where the traditional audio user interfaces, microphones and speakers, are accompanied with touch screens, cameras, accelerometers and gyroscopes etc. These enriched user interfaces combined with the ever increasing capacity of processors, access to mobile networks with increasing bandwidths and functionality as global positioning system (GPS) and near field communication (NFC) will make mobile terminals well suited for developing user-friendly multimodal interfaces in the years to come. However, the multimodal functionality on mobile terminals is still restricted to two input modes: speech (audio) and touch, and two output modes: audio and vision. This type of multimodality, sometimes called tap & talk (or point & speak), is essentially

Customer support as a source of usability insight: why users call support after visiting self-service websites

Though customer support is argued to be a useful source of usability insight, how to benefit from customer support in usability evaluation is hardly made the subject of scientific research. In this paper, we present an approach to gather usability insight from users when they call customer support. We also present a case implementation of this approach: an evaluation of a telecom operators customer website. We find that the proposed approach provides insight in usability problems, technical issues, and issues of strategic character. Though the majority of the website users called customer support because they were obstructed in their attempt to use available self-service support options, a substantial proportion of the users called customer support as a planned part of their task. On the basis of the study findings we present practical implications and suggest future research.

Customer journeys: a systematic literature review

Customer journeys have become an increasingly important topic in service management and design. The purpose of this paper is to review customer journey terminology and approaches within the research literature prior to 2013, mainly from the fields of design, management, and marketing.,The study was conducted as a systematic literature review. Searches in Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Knowledge, ACM Digital Library, and ScienceDirect identified 45 papers for the analysis. The papers were analyzed with respect to customer journey terminology and approaches, the relation to customer experience, the referenced background, and the use of visualizations.,Across the reviewed literature, customer journeys are described not only as a means to take the viewpoint of the customer, but also to reach insight into their experiences. A rich and at times incoherent customer journey terminology is analyzed and discussed, as are two emerging customer journey approaches: customer journey mapping (analysis of a service process “as is”) and customer journey proposition (generative activities leading toward a possible service “to be”).,The review is limited to analyzing and making claims on research papers that explicitly apply the term customer journey. In most of the reviewed papers, customer journeys are not the main object of interest but are discussed as one of several topics.,A nuanced discussion of customer journey terminology and approaches is provided, supporting the practical application of a customer journey perspective.,The review contributes a needed common basis for future customer journey research and practice.

Design Feedback From Users Through an Online Social Platform: Benefits and Limitations

Online social platforms, such as blogs, discussion forums and social networking sites, are increasingly explored as venues for user-centred evaluations; in particular, for design feedback from users. We present a multi-case study providing needed knowledge on such evaluations. Our findings are based on analyses of the design feedback and post-factum data collections with development team representatives and users. The development team representatives reported as key benefits that the evaluations provided insight into users’ needs and competencies, input into ongoing design discussions and support for idea generation in the development team, but found the lack of direct contact and control with the users to be an important limitation. The users appreciated the opportunity to contribute to the design process, but the majority reported not to build on each other’s contributions. Involving a relatively large number of users was found to be beneficial for generating constructive design suggestions. Practical implications and future research challenges are suggested.

Norwegian numerals: a challenge to automatic speech recognition

Addresses the problem of speaker-independent connected-numeral recognition over telephone lines. Increasing the vocabulary from digits (0-9) to numerals (0-99) opens up the possibility for more user-friendly services, but it also introduces many new, language-specific problems. This paper investigates morphological, phonemic and allophonic variations in the pronunciation of numerals in Norwegian. If improvements in recognition performance are to be achieved, these language-specific issues have to be considered.

Market Structure and Innovation Policies in Norway

Norway is a small country with high Gross domestic product per capita and a digitally sophisticated market. Norwegian and Nordic owner groups control newspapers, while foreign interests control the commercial broadcasting sector. Our analysis of Community Innovation Survey data shows that newspapers, radio- and television broadcasting firms are significantly less innovative in product, service and process innovation than the other service firms in the data set. The news media subsector as defined and covered in this book was significantly underrepresented in innovation funding schemes. While regulations limits growth of media firms, size might be an important precondition for media innovations.

Improved automatic recognition of Norwegian natural numbers by incorporating phonetic knowledge

This paper addresses the problem of speaker-independent connected natural number recognition over telephone lines. Increasing the vocabulary from digits (0-9) to natural numbers (0-99) opens for more user-friendly services, but also introduces many new, language-specific problems, such as more similar sounding words, a more complex grammar network, and more ambiguities due to segmentation problems of connected natural numbers. The paper shows that incorporating phonetic knowledge into a Norwegian natural number recogniser, improved the recognition performance from 70.6% to 76.3% correctly recognised 8-digit telephone numbers in noisy conditions.