A Design Theory Approach to Building Strategic Network‐Based Customer Service Systems*

Abstract

Customer service is a key component of a firm's value proposition and a fundamental driver of differentiation and competitive advantage in nearly every industry. Moreover, the relentless coevolution of service opportunities with novel and more powerful information technologies has made this area exciting for academic researchers who can contribute to shaping the design and management of future customer service systems. We engage in interdisciplinary research-across information systems, marketing, and computer science-in order to contribute to the service design and service management literature. Grounded in the design-science perspective, our study leverages marketing theory on the service-dominant logic and recent findings pertaining to the evolution of customer service systems. Our theorizing culminates with the articulation of four design principles. These design principles underlie the emerging class of customer service systems that, we believe, will enable firms to better compete in an environment * This research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. † Corresponding author. 404Design Theory Approach to Building Strategic NCSS characterized by an increase in customer centricity and in customers' ability to selfserve and dynamically assemble the components of solutions that fit their needs. In this environment, customers retain control over their transactional data, as well as the timing and mode of their interactions with firms, as they increasingly gravitate toward integrated complete customer solutions rather than single products or services. Guided by these design principles, we iterated through, and evaluated, two instantiations of the class of systems we propose, before outlining implications and directions for further cross-disciplinary scholarly research.

The competitive impact of information technology: can commodity IT contribute to competitive performance?

“…The increasing importance of CS as a means to competitive differentiation and the co-evolution of CS and IT (Day et al, 2004) have renewed the impetus to advance this area (El Sawy & Bowles, 1997;Brohman et al, 2003;Ray et al, 2005;Chesbrough & Spohrer, 2006;Brohman et al, 2009). Many examples of IT-enabled strategic initiatives that address CS exist, ranging from personalized Websites that greet returning customers and call center software that allows service agents to engage in personal interactions to selfservice kiosks and mobile alerts that keep customers informed about their bank accounts balances.…”

“…When working properly, self-service can increase service speed (Chase & Tansik, 1983), provide customers with more control (Lee & Allaway, 2002), and it can have a positive effect on customer satisfaction when it provides users with access to services at a convenient time and location (Meuter et al, 2000;Bitner, 2001;Yen, 2005). This type of IT-enabled service, representing an important tool for competitive differentiation and superior performance (Rayport & Jaworski, 2004;Sheehan, 2006;Brohman et al, 2009), can allow organizations to sustain price premiums over time (Nault & Dexter, 1995). Much of the early work on selfservice has focused on a single service channel considered in isolation (Galletta et al, 2004;Otim & Grover, 2006;Cenfetelli et al, 2008).…”

Relational Mechanisms in Innovation Co-Creation

“…A growing body of studies were dedicated to this aspect of the contemporary business in innovation, ranging from a virtual customer environments perspective (Füller, 2010;Baron, 2007, 2009;Nambisan and Nambisan, 2008), to a NPDI approach (Franke et al, 2008;Prahalad and Krishnan, 2008;Sawhney et al, 2006 a.o. ), the service-dominant logic perspective (Brohman et al, 2009;Ballantyne and Varey, 2006;Vargo and Lusch, 2004), to a general management view (Ramaswamy and Goullart, 2010;Ramaswamy, 2009;Jaworski and Kohli, 2006;Ramaswamy, 2000, 2004;Nambisan and Nambisan, 2008 a.o.). As opposed to the customer-focused innovation, where innovation is done by the company (closed innovation), or to the customer-centered innovation, where innovation is done with customers (open innovation), in the customer-driven innovation these activities are done by customers (dynamic innovation), as a central entity and key-player, where the innovative company has only a role of coordinator and the innovation process is quite impossible to control.…”

Explanatory Design Theory

“…This theory should provide conditional functional explanations. Brohman et al (2009) proposed a design theory for strategic network-based customer service systems. The requirement involves deciding which services to deliver to a customer base where each and every customer may seem to want distinctly different services.…”