Shared Lessons for Customer Service and Field Service Organizations

By Jeffrey Wartgow In preparation for this year’s upcoming Compete Through Service Symposium, I took time to reflect on the trends that will impact field service over the coming years. After sifting through analyst reports, notes from customer meetings, and other industry insights, some major themes kept surfacing – and one overarching idea emerged:  what …

Show you care: initiating co-creation in service recovery

By Dr. Yingzi Xu Customers are no longer passive receivers of service offerings from companies, but rather value creators themselves. Companies realize that involving customers in service production and co-production is a cost-saving strategy and an effective way to satisfy customers. Co-production expands to co-design of new services as well as to co-recovery, which allows companies …

How Customer Participation in B2B Peer-to-Peer Problem Solving Communities Influences the Need for Traditional Customer Service

By Sterling Bone Can peer-to-peer interactions in a customer support community reduce the need for one-on-one traditional customer support service? New research sponsored by Arizona State’s Center for Services Leadership and published in the Journal of Service Research (JSR) attempts to address this question. Firms that leverage the collective wisdom and knowledge in their customer …

Put Your Customers to Work? Not So Fast!

By Lan Xia With the support of new technologies, companies are gradually realizing the importance and benefits of co-creation, where the value of a service is increasingly co-created by the firm and the customer. Consumers are increasingly put to work for the services they demand, from carrying their own food in fast-food restaurants to creating …