Browsing by Subject "Service"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
  • Thumbnail Image
    Publication
    Artificial intelligence and robots in services : theory and management of (future) human–robot service interactions
    (2023) Blaurock, Marah Karin; Büttgen, Marion
    During the past decade, service robots have increasingly been deployed in a wide variety of services, where they co-produce service outcomes with and for the benefit of internal or external customers within human–robot service interactions (HRSI). Although the introduction of different service robot types into the marketplace promises efficiency gains, it changes premises of service encounter theory and practice fundamentally. Moreover, introducing service robots without considering external or internal customers’ needs can lead to negative service outcomes. This thesis aims to generate knowledge on how the introduction of different service robot types (i.e., embodied and digital service robots) in internal and external service encounters changes fundamental premises of service encounter theory and impacts HRSI outcomes. In doing so, it leverages different scientific methods and focuses on external service encounters with digital and embodied service robots, as well as internal service encounters with digital service robots. Chapter 2 aims to advance service encounter theory in the context of HRSI in external service encounters by conceptually developing a service encounter theory evaluation scheme to assess a theory’s fit to explain HRSI-related phenomena. The scheme includes individual and contextual factors that bound theoretical premises and, hence, supports scholars in assessing standing service encounter theories. The chapter also puts forth an exemplary assessment of role theory and provides detailed avenues for future research. Chapter 3 aims to synthesize the great wealth of knowledge on HRSI related to external service encounters with embodied service robots. By conducting a comprehensive systematic literature review, the chapter identifies 199 empirical research articles across scientific fields that can inform service research on how to successfully introduce service robots into the organizational frontline. To organize the plethora of research findings, this chapter develops a new structuring framework (D3: design, delegate, deploy). It utilizes this framework to provide a comprehensive overview of the empirical HRSI literature, delineates practical implications, and identifies gaps in literature to identify promising future research avenues. Chapter 4 also addresses HRSI in external service encounters but focuses specifically on the transformative potential of embodied service robots to enhance vulnerable consumers’ (i.e., children and older adults) well-being in social isolation. To identify how different robots can enhance well-being, this chapter follows a conceptual approach and integrates findings from service research, social robotics, social psychology, and medicine. The chapter develops a typology of robotic transformative service (i.e., entertainer, social enabler, mentor, and friend) as a function of consumers state of social isolation, well-being focus, and robot capabilities and a future research agenda for robotic transformative service research (RTSR). This work guides service consumers and providers, as well as robot developers, in identifying and developing the most appropriate robot type for advancing the well-being of vulnerable consumers in social isolation. Finally, Chapter 5 focuses on HRSI research in the context of interactions with digital service robots in internal service encounters. Based on a comprehensive literature review paired with a qualitative study, it conceptionally develops a new concept of a collaborative, digital service robot: a collaborative intelligence system (i.e., CI system) that co-produces service with employees. Drawing from service encounter needs theory, the chapter also empirically tests the effect of CI systems on employee need fulfillment (i.e., need for control, cognition, self-efficacy, and justice) and, in turn, on responsibility taking in two scenario-based experiments. The results uncover divergent mechanisms of how the fulfillment of service encounter needs drives the effect of CI systems on outcome responsibility for different employee groups. Service scholars and managers benefit from a blueprint for designing collaborative digital service robots and an understanding of their effects on employee outcomes in service co-production. In summary, this thesis contributes to literature by providing new insights into different types of HRSI by consolidating HRSI knowledge, developing and advancing HRSI concepts and theory, and empirically investigating HRSI-related phenomena. The new insights put forth in this thesis are discussed and implications for service theory and practice are delineated.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Publication
    Betriebliche Kommunikationsprozesse bei Dienstleistern : Herausforderungen für Organisation und IT durch Kundenorientierung (Anhang)
    (2010) Kordowich, Philipp
    Customer-oriented service provision as in customer solutions or services results in new requirements for the organisation of the company and for information technology support. The work introduces the specific characteristics of customer-oriented services in comparison to other services and their impact on organisational activities. To this end, the thesis examines the actors affected by the service provision and discusses the related changes. The findings are used to derive the consequences of customer-oriented service provision for organisational communication processes. Finally, the potential of information technology support is shown.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Publication
    Multiagent resource allocation in service networks
    (2014) Karänke, Paul; Kirn, Stefan
    The term service network (SN) denotes a network of software services in which complex software applications are provided to customers by aggregating multiple elementary services. These networks are based on the service-oriented computing (SOC) paradigm, which defines the fundamental technical concepts for software services over electronic networks, e.g., Web services and, most recently, Cloud services. For the provision of software services to customers, software service providers (SPs) have to allocate their scarce computational resources (i.e., hardware and software) of a certain quality to customer requests. The SOC paradigm facilitates interoperability over organizational boundaries by representing business relationships on the software system level. Composite software services aggregate multiple software services into software applications. This aggregation is denoted as service composition. The loose coupling of services leads to SNs as dynamic entities with changing interdependencies between services. For composite software services, these dependencies exist across SN tiers; they result from the procurement of services, which are themselves utilized to produce additional services, and constitute a major problem for resource allocation in SNs. If these dependencies are not considered, the fulfillment of agreements may become unaccomplishable (overcommitment). Hence, the consideration of service dependencies is crucial for the allocation of service providers resources to fulfill customer requests in SNs. However, existing resource allocation methods, which could consider these dependencies -- such as combinatorial auctions with a central auctioneer for the whole SN -- are not applicable, since there are no central coordinating entities in SNs. The application of an allocation mechanism that does not consider these dependencies might negatively affect the actual service delivery; results are penalty payments as well as a damage to the reputation of the providers. This research is conducted in accordance to the design science paradigm in information system research. It is a problem-solving paradigm, which targets the construction and evaluation of IT artifacts. The objectives of this research are to develop and evaluate an allocation protocol, which can consider multi-tier service dependencies without the existence of central coordinating entities. Therefore, an interaction protocol engineering (IPE) perspective is applied to solve the problem of multi-tier dependencies in resource allocation. This approach provides a procedure model for designing interaction protocols for multiagent systems, and is closely related to the well-established area of communication protocol engineering. Automated resource allocation in SNs is analyzed in this research by representing the actors as autonomous software agents in the software system. The actors delegate their objectives to their software agents, which conduct the negotiations for service provision on their behalf. Thus, these agents communicate concerning the resource allocation; in this process, the sequence of communication interactions is crucial to the problem addressed. Interaction protocols define a structured exchange of defined messages between agents; they facilitate agent conversations. When multiple agents have to reach agreements by negotiation and bargaining, such as in case with allocating scarce resources, game theory provides means to formalize and analyze the most rational choice of actions for the interacting agents. Based on a formal framework for resource allocation in SNs, this research first performs a game-theoretic problem analysis; it is concerned with the existence, as well as the complexity of computing optimal allocations. In addition, Nash equilibria are analyzed for optimal allocations. Second, a distributed, auction-based allocation protocol, which prevents overcommitments and guarantees socially optimal allocations for single customer requests under certain assumptions, is proposed. Therefore, a game-theoretic model and an operationizable specification of the protocol are presented. Third, it is formally verified that the protocol enables multi-tier resource allocation and avoids overcommitments by proofs for the game-theoretic model and by model checking for the interaction protocol specification; using the model checker Spin, safety properties like the absence of deadlock are as well formally verified as the protocol enabling multi-tier resource allocation. Fourth, the efficacy and the benefits of the proposed protocol are demonstrated by multiagent simulation for concurrent customers. The experimental evaluation provides evidence of the protocols efficiency compared to the socially optimal allocation as a centralized benchmark in different settings, e.g., network topologies and different bidding policies.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Publication
    Negative affective states in customers’ service experience : investigating antecedents and mitigations
    (2019) Haager, Stephanie; Büttgen, Marion
    Previous research has provided various insights into the potential benefits and competitive advantages of customer participation (Bendapudi and Leone 2003). For instance, customer participation can lower production costs and improve productivity (Lovelock and Young 1979; Mills and Morris 1986), service quality, customer satisfaction (Bendapudi and Leone 2003; Chan et al. 2010; Dong et al. 2015), and opportunities for promotion (Bettencourt 1997). Hence, many companies create a new customer experience by making the customer a co-creator of value (Ramaswamy and Gouillart 2010). However, observing people trying to print their own luggage tags and checking in at an airport or assembling IKEA furniture reveals emotions that are not always positive. Customers appear to be overtaxed, irritated, unhappy, and distressed. This phenomenon is especially relevant for services that are crucial for customers and that cause them to feel some kind of pressure (e.g., time), that are hard to understand, or are in any way upsetting. For instance, in one of their studies, Berry et al. (2015) found that patients in hospitals experienced such stress due to the service process and newspapers often also report on the problem of customers feeling helpless at banks (Adamu 2015). Attributable to the growing number of tasks that customers have to fulfill, yet, they are not driven by failures in the process but by stressors within the service process. Such stressors could arise from industry-specific knowledge that customers often do not have (e.g., financial expertise), the high relevance of the service to a customer’s life (e.g., medical services), or high time pressure (e.g., the need to catch a flight). However, organizations might not be aware of such stressors, and research about negative emotions, particularly stress due to physical and mental overload and strain in customer participation, is lacking. Service organizations, however, might benefit from such research, as managers must be aware of potential stressors and the possibility that customers could become stressed due to the characteristics of the service itself. Greater knowledge in this area would enable managers to respond to customer stress appropriately, e.g., by altering the service design or process and by training their employees to intervene when necessary. This thesis seeks to fill in this gap within two empirical studies (chapter 2 and 3). As a means of investigating negative customer emotions in services with flawless delivery, customer participation stress (CPS) is introduced as a new construct to service marketing research. The definition of CPS builds on established definitions of stress from general and organizational psychology and links them to the behavioral aspects of customer participation. While CPS is a negative emotion that occurs within the service process, some services are affected by negative emotions that have already emerged before the actual service encounter and/or are the initial reason the customer has come to the service provider. These services, such as medical or funeral services, can be summarized as negative services (Dasu and Rao 1999; Morgan and Rao 2006). It might be a challenge for service organizations to actively engage customers in such services, yet their professional reputations are vital to their ability to remain in business; methods of how such service providers may increase customer engagement are outlined in chapter 3. While previous studies have presented valuable insights into positive emotions in the customer experience, negative emotions due to service failure, and the service process of negative services, research to date has not covered knowledge about negative customer emotions in flawless customer experiences with a focus on jointly created value of employee and customer and a comprehensive definition and boundaries of negative services. This thesis seeks to fill in these gaps with three distinct but related studies, two quantitative and one conceptual; answering to the following research questions: 1. Which demands and resources of the participation process cause CPS and how does CPS influence customer participation behavior? 2. What are the consequences of CPS and how do they influence customers’ evaluation of a service? 3. How can the characteristics of the participation process and customers’ predispositions mitigate unwanted psycho-physical and behavioral outcomes of CPS? 4. What characterizes negative services and how can providers of such service be more successful by engaging customers?
  • Thumbnail Image
    Publication
    Varieties of service economies in Europe
    (2012) DiMeglio, Gisela; Pyka, Andreas; Rubalcaba, Luis
    This paper identifies the varieties and dynamics of service economies in Europe, analysing the role of knowledge base and innovative efforts and their evolution across time and countries. Results based on aggregated macroeconomic data indicate that there is no convergence trend towards a single service economy model. Moreover, different service economies models can be associated with institutional and welfare state diversity. When analysing a comprehensive set of indicators at a disaggregated level a more detailed pattern of service economies emerges. The structural composition of countries plays a prominent role, while heterogeneity is driven by uneven knowledge bases and innovative efforts.