Lia Patrício

Service Research Priorities in a Rapidly Changing Context

The context in which service is delivered and experienced has, in many respects, fundamentally changed. For instance, advances in technology, especially information technology, are leading to a proliferation of revolutionary services and changing how customers serve themselves before, during, and after purchase. To understand this changing landscape, the authors engaged in an international and interdisciplinary research effort to identify research priorities that have the potential to advance the service field and benefit customers, organizations, and society. The priority-setting process was informed by roundtable discussions with researchers affiliated with service research centers and networks located around the world and resulted in the following 12 service research priorities: stimulating service innovation, facilitating servitization, service infusion, and solutions, understanding organization and employee issues relevant to successful service, developing service networks and systems, leveraging service design, using big data to advance service, understanding value creation, enhancing the service experience, improving well-being through transformative service, measuring and optimizing service performance and impact, understanding service in a global context, and leveraging technology to advance service. For each priority, the authors identified important specific service topics and related research questions. Then, through an online survey, service researchers assessed the subtopics’ perceived importance and the service field’s extant knowledge about them. Although all the priorities and related topics were deemed important, the results show that topics related to transformative service and measuring and optimizing service performance are particularly important for advancing the service field along with big data, which had the largest gap between importance and current knowledge of the field. The authors present key challenges that should be addressed to move the field forward and conclude with a discussion of the need for additional interdisciplinary research.

Multilevel Service Design: From Customer Value Constellation to Service Experience Blueprinting

The proliferation of complex service systems raises new challenges for service design and requires new methods. Multilevel Service Design (MSD) is presented as a new interdisciplinary method for designing complex service systems. MSD synthesizes contributions from new service development, interaction design, and the emerging field of service design. MSD enables integrated development of service offerings at three hierarchical levels: (a) Designing the firm’s service concept with the customer value constellation of service offerings for the value constellation experience; (b) Designing the firm’s service system, comprising its architecture and navigation, for the service experience; and (c) Designing each service encounter with the Service Experience Blueprint for the service encounter experience. Applications of the MSD method are described for designing a new retail grocery service and for redesigning a bank service. MSD contributes an interdisciplinary service design method that accommodates the cocreative nature of customer experiences and enables experience integration from the design of the service concept through the design of the service system and service encounter.

Designing Multi-Interface Service Experiences

This article introduces the Service Experience Blueprint (SEB), a multidisciplinary method for designing multi-interface service experiences, and illustrates its application with two case examples of the redesign of the service experiences of a multichannel bank. The SEB method starts by studying the customer service experience to understand customer experience requirements for different service activities and how these requirements can be satisfied through alternative service interfaces. Based on this analysis, the multi-interface service is designed to allocate service activities to the interfaces best suited to provide the desired experience, defining channel specialization and integration. Finally, with the SEB method each service interface is designed to best leverage its unique capabilities and guide customers to other service interfaces whenever that interface better enhances the overall customer experience. By incorporating the contributions of service management, interaction design, and software engineering, the SEB method is a multidisciplinary tool and terminology for service design.

Customer experience modeling: from customer experience to service design

Purpose – Customer experience has become increasingly important for service organizations that see it as a source of sustainable competitive advantage, and for service designers, who consider it fundamental to any service design project.Design/methodology/approach – Integrating contributions from different fields, CEM was conceptually developed to represent the different aspects of customer experience in a holistic diagrammatic representation. CEM was further developed with an application to a multimedia service. To further develop and build CEMs models, 17 customers of a multimedia service provider were interviewed and the data were analyzed using Grounded Theory methodology.Findings – Combining multidisciplinary contributions to represent customer experience elements enables the systematization of its complex information. The application to a multimedia service highlights how CEM can facilitate the work of multidisciplinary design teams by providing more insightful inputs to service design.Originality/...

Improving satisfaction with bank service offerings: measuring the contribution of each delivery channel

This article presents the results of a qualitative study of a Portuguese bank regarding customer use of Internet banking integrated in a multi‐channel offering that includes high street branches, telephone banking, and automatic teller machines. The results show that performance evaluation is a key factor influencing channel use. Customers tend to use the different service delivery systems in a complementary way, taking into account their assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of each one. Customer characteristics, and the type of financial operation, are also identified as important factors influencing this process. These results indicate that, in a multi‐channel context, customer satisfaction with Internet services depends not only on the performance of this channel in isolation, but also on how it contributes to satisfaction with the overall service offering.

Understanding value co-creation in complex services with many actors

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of value co-creation in complex value networks with many actors. Electronic health records (EHRs) are innovations that warrant deep study to properly introduce such a complex system. Design/methodology/approach – The paper describes a qualitative study based on Grounded Theory to understand value co-creation from multiple actors’ perspectives in a National EHR Service Project: the Portuguese Health Data Platform. Findings – Study results enabled further development of the value co-creation concept in complex environments with multiple actors. More specifically they allowed: operationalizing the value co-creation concept by identifying its factors and outcomes, understanding how value co-creation factors and outcomes are interconnected, and understanding of how value co-creation for each actor depends on his/her own actions and the actions of other actors, in a complex set of interactions and interdependencies. Practical implications – The findi...

“Futurizing” smart service: implications for service researchers and managers

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to craft a future research agenda to advance smart service research and practice. Smart services are delivered to or via intelligent objects that feature awareness and connectivity. For service researchers and managers, one of the most fascinating aspects of smart service provision is that the connected object is able to sense its own condition and its surroundings and thus allows for real-time data collection, continuous communication and interactive feedback. Design/methodology/approach – This article is based on discussions in the workshop on “Fresh perspectives on technology in service” at the International Network of Service Researchers on September 26, 2014 at CTF, Karlstad, Sweden. The paper summarizes the discussion on smart services, adds an extensive literature review, provides examples from business practice and develops a structured approach to new research avenues. Findings – We propose that smart services vary on their individual level of autonomous dec...

Billions of impoverished people deserve to be better served: A call to action for the service research community

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to create a movement within the service research community that aspires to help the billions of impoverished people across the world achieve better service from each other, from their communities, from corporations, from their governments, and from nongovernmental organizations. The authors believe every human being is worthy of being served properly. To achieve this purpose, understanding and learning from this huge low-income segment of society known as the base of the pyramid (BoP) is essential. There are myths about the BoP that need to be dispelled and there is a fundamental lack of service research on this important problem. Design/methodology/approach – The existence of an extensive BoP literature combined with service research priorities has called attention to drafting research agendas. Human service systems are explored historically and systems theory provides a perspective for understanding and reducing poverty. Transformative service research, service des...

Development of an extended Kansei engineering method to incorporate experience requirements in product–service system design

The customer experience is important for adding value to firms’ offerings but two challenges arise: the customer experience is increasingly created through interactions with product–service systems (PSSs) and it is formed through all moments of interaction with multiple firms. Incorporating customer experience requirements (ERs) into the design of PSSs is therefore a complex task. To address this challenge, this paper presents an extension of the Kansei engineering method consisting of two components. First, the extension includes an in-depth study of the customer experience from a holistic perspective that informs the design process. Second, it involves the active participation of multidisciplinary experts from the different partner companies that together enable the PSS offering. An application of this new extension is presented for mid-distance bus trips, involving passengers, a vehicle manufacturing and a transport provider company. The research followed design-science guidelines using an action research approach to develop new public transportation PSS concepts by involving a multidisciplinary design team. The customer experience study enables the team adequately incorporate ERs along the development process, and the joint work of the intercompany team of experts enables integration of the different PSS elements into a solution that enhances the travel experience from a holistic perspective.

Value cocreation in service ecosystems: Investigating health care at the micro, meso, and macro levels

The purpose of this paper is to understand value cocreation in service ecosystems from a multilevel perspective, uncovering value cocreation factors and outcomes at the micro, meso, and macro levels.,A Grounded Theory approach based on semi-structured interviews is adopted. The sample design was defined to enable the ecosystem analysis at its different levels. At the macro level was the Portuguese Health Information ecosystem. Embedded meso level units of analysis comprised eight health care organizations. A total of 48 interviews with citizens and health care practitioners were conducted at the micro level.,Study results enable a detailed understanding of the nature and dynamics of value cocreation in service ecosystems from a multilevel perspective. First, value cocreation factors are identified (resource access, resource sharing, resource recombination, resource monitoring, and governance/institutions generation). These factors enable actors to integrate resources in multiple dynamic interactions to cocreate value outcomes, which involve both population well-being and ecosystem viability. Study results show that these value cocreation factors and outcomes differ across levels, but they are also embedded and interdependent.,The findings have important implications for organizations that are ecosystem actors (like the Portuguese Ministry of Health) for understanding synergies among value cocreation factors and outcomes at the different levels. This provides orientations to better integrate different actor roles, technology, and information while facilitating ecosystem coordination and co-evolution.,This study responds to the need for a multilevel understanding of value cocreation in service ecosystems. It also illuminates how keystone players in the ecosystem should manage their value propositions to promote resource integration for each actor, fostering resource density and ecosystem viability. It also bridges the high-level conceptual perspective of Service-Dominant logic with specific empirical findings in the very important context of health care.