Although interaction has been acknowledged as central in value creation there is still a lack of empirical studies on how value creation is accomplished in practice, and in particular how communicative skills support customers' value creation. The purpose of this paper is therefore to generate a deeper understanding of how customer service representatives' communicative skills in conversations with customers support customers' value creation. We argue that value creating processes correspond to customers' roles as "feelers", "thinkers" and "doers". Accordingly, value creation involves three interdependent elements, an emotional, a cognitive and a behavioral. Based on a qualitative research design, drawing on an empirical study of 80 telephone conversations between customers and customer service representatives in a business-to-business context, the paper demonstrates three communicative skills that are essential in supporting customers' value creation: attentiveness, perceptiveness and responsiveness. The findings show how employees, by means of these communicative skills support customers' value creation. Attentiveness supports cognitive elements of the customers' value creating processes, whereas perceptiveness supports value creation in terms of cognitive, behavioral and emotional aspects. Finally, responsiveness supports the customer's cognitive as well as behavioral value creation.

Dealing with customer misbehavior: Employees' tactics, practical judgement and implicit knowledge. Keywords Customer misbehaviour, dysfunctional service encounters, frontline employees, tactics, practical judgement, implicit knowledge, practice theory. Per Echeverri has a PhD in marketing from Göteborg university. He is a member Paper type Research paper

Purpose -Customer misbehaviour, i.e. behaviour within the exchange setting that deliberately violates the generally accepted norms of conduct in such settings pose a problem for service organizations in several ways. Hitherto much research on customer misbehaviour has focused on psychological explanations and individual characteristics. This study broadens the perspective by taking structural factors of the service system into account. The purpose is to complement the existing literature on customer misbehaviour by investigating how the design and functioning of the service system influences the prevalence of customer misbehaviour. Design/methodology/approach -A critical incident technique was adopted to collect and analyse qualitative data from frontline employees who work on board buses, trains, trams and in metro in the Swedish public transport system. Findings -The study shows that many incidents are triggered by features of the service system. Specifically, three dimensions (service regulations, service resources, and service practice) of the service system are brought forward. The study suggests that customer misbehaviour is caused by an inherent paradox between pre-planned, standardised, mass service solutions and ambitions to adopt a customer orientation. Originality/value -By bringing forward the interactive role of the service system and its functionality the study complements previous research and contributes to a more complete understanding of customer misbehaviour, in particular within the context of system dependent services.