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Purpose - This paper aims to explore practices and technologies successfully servitised manufacturers employ in the delivery of advanced services. Design/methodology/approach - A case study methodology is applied across four manufacturing organisations successful in servitization. Through interviews with personnel across host manufacturers, their partners, and key customers, extensive data are collected about service delivery systems. Analyses identify convergence in their practices and technologies. Findings - Six distinct technologies and practices are revealed: facilities and their location, micro-vertical integration and supplier relationships, information and communication technologies (ICTs), performance measurement and value demonstration, people deployment and their skills, and business processes and customer relationships. These are then combined in an integrative framework that illustrates how operations are configured to successfully deliver advanced services. Research limitations/implications - The analyses are reductive and rationalising. Future studies could identify other technologies and practices. Case study as a method is inherently limited in the extent to which findings can be generalised. Practical implications - Awareness and interest in servitization is growing, yet adoption of a servitization strategy requires particular organisational capabilities on the part of the manufacturer. This study identifies technologies and practices that underpin these capabilities. Originality/value - This paper contributes to the understanding of the servitization process and, in particular, the implications to broader operations of the firm.

Purpose - Service organizations and marketers have focussed too much of their energy on their core service's performance and too little emphasis on designing a customer journey that enhances the entire customer experience. There is nothing wrong with firms seeking continuous improvement in service quality and customer satisfaction. These efforts are needed for firms to be competitive in the marketplace. The problem occurs when performance levels and service offerings become too similar within an industry, so that price is the only competitive weapon that remains. The purpose of this paper is to argue that in order to break this deadlock, companies need to focus on the small details that make big differences to customers. Design/methodology/approach - The paper builds on interviews with executives in successful service organizations. It provides an analysis of differentiation strategies in diverse service organizations across consumption contexts, nations and cultures around the world. Findings - The paper develops three research propositions and argues for radical approaches to help service organizations truly understand customers and provide service experiences that engage and delight them. The paper argues that the new challenge for marketing is to help companies find and implement these small details to make a large impact on the overall customer experience. Originality/value - In order to truly understand the customer experience, the paper need a holistic view of all interactions customers have with a company. The paper need to understand the customer-firm interactions at all touch points, that is, during search, purchase, consumption and post-consumption. Customer experience involves the customers' cognitive, affective, emotional, social and sensory responses to the firm. The originality of this research lies in the focus on the small details that make a difference to customers during the service process rather than in the final outcome of the service performance.

PurposeOrganizations increasingly develop and offer sharing services enabled by means of product-service systems (PSS). However, organizations offering sharing-based PSS face a unique set of design challenges and operational risks. The purpose of this paper is to provide researchers and practitioners with customer-based insights into service delivery system design and risk management for sharing-based PSS operational success.Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative study combines in-depth interviews with supplementary, multidisciplinary literature and secondary firm data. In total, the authors conducted 56 semi-structured interviews with diverse customers across different business-to-customer (B2C) PSS settings.FindingsFirst, the authors develop an integrative conceptual framework that reveals what structural and infrastructural design choices customer expect organizations to make for mitigating risks and enhancing customer-perceived value in the sharing economy. These design choices may influence customers' trust and control perceptions in all actors involved in the service delivery system. Second, the results suggest that sharing value proposition, customer-perceived level of consequentiality and level of customer-supplied resources are contingency factors that need to be considered when making design decisions for risk management in the sharing economy.Originality/valueThis study extends Sampson's Unified Service Theory by proposing that, with sharing-based PSS, production flows from customers to customers. This situation creates unique challenges for operations management. This paper extends current understanding of the role, characteristics and contingencies of service delivery system design for risk management in the sharing economy. In doing so, authors challenge common wisdom and suggest understanding both the organizational and customers' individual contexts is critical for (contingency) theory and practice.

This paper investigates tourists’ preferences toward the humans-robots ratio in the service delivery systems of tourism and hospitality companies and the factors that shape them. The sample includes 1537 respondents from nearly 100 countries. The findings show that a higher preferred share of robots is positively associated with the perceived emotional skills of robots, their perceived usefulness in the tourism/hospitality context, perceived robotic service expectations, attitudes towards robots in general, and the male gender. On the other side, it is negatively associated with the perceived disadvantages of robots compared to human servers and the household size of respondents.

Purpose - The aim of this paper is to explore and empirically investigate the characteristics and contingencies of service delivery system design.Design methodology approach - Informed by the service strategy triad, a single embedded case study was designed to explore empirical data on four target markets, four service concepts, and on the design characteristics of the corresponding four service delivery systems. Data were collected in a market-leading organisation in the business-to-business sector within the power industry. The service delivery systems comprise processes that sell electricity contracts and processes that bill against those contracts.Findings - First, the findings indicate what design characteristics are contingent upon the degree of customisation of the service concept. The authors show how this contingency has implications for the extents of employee skills, employee discretion, task routineness, automation, and for front office (FO)-back office (BO) configurations. Second, the authors challenge the consensus that low customer-contact processes are designed for the purpose of efficiency. Third, the findings contradict Metters and Vargas who state that it is not possible to have different FO-BO configurations in a single organisation.Research limitations implications - While there are major interactions between the four service delivery systems supporting each individual service concept, this paper does not examine the trade-offs between the various possible designs of these service delivery systems.Practical implications - The paper emphasises the importance of considering the complexity of the service offering, the customer relationship strategy, and of taking a process-orientation to address service delivery system design.Originality value - This paper extends current understanding of service delivery system design characteristics and contingencies. The authors show how design characteristics are contingent on the service concept. Research propositions are formulated to emphasise this contingency. Additionally, we report findings which challenge existing FO-BO design theory.

This study aims to formulate effective and sustainable strategies to manage post COVID-19 crisis in the tourism and hospitality industry. Data were collected from 290 respondents using the purposive sampling procedure in which the response rate is 70.7%. The structural equation modeling software, SmartPLS 3.0, is used to analyze the constructs of this study and hypothesis testing. The result shows that among the 6 hypothesized paths, 4 were supported, and out of 32 relationship paths, 25 paths are significant. This study reveals that travel risk management, service delivery system, hygiene and safety are the most influencial factors of travel behavior.

PurposeThis research explores how to design service delivery systems to facilitate a customer experience that enables the realisation of prevention-oriented goals.Design/methodology/approachCase-based research is undertaken to inform the design of service delivery systems for prevention-oriented consumption goals. Data from multiple informants, from both the provider and customer perspective, in two in-depth case studies, provide empirical insights.FindingsDrawing on customer and provider perspectives, a model of service design for prevention-oriented goals is presented. The model is informed through the identification of service delivery system characteristics (facility layout, staff service orientation, facility appearance and staff presence/appearance) and perceived experience quality dimensions (control, duration, privacy and reliability impressions) that contribute to the fulfilment of prevention-oriented consumption goals.Practical implicationsThe research affirms that it is critical for organisations to comprehend the goals they want their service delivery systems to enable in the customer experience. Specific attention should be given to the design of facility layout, staff-service orientation, facility appearance, staff presence/appearance to positively impact perceived quality dimensions and to facilitate the realisation of customer prevention goals.Originality/valueThe main research contribution lies in the articulation of the design characteristics of the service delivery system that enables a customer experience supporting the fulfilment of prevention goals. The empirical study draws on both customer and organisational perspectives to identify prevention-oriented goals, and corresponding experience quality dimensions, to inform service delivery system design.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide novel theoretical insight into service delivery system (SDS) design. To do so, this paper adopts a customer journey perspective, using it as a frame to explore dimensions of experience quality that inform design requirements. Design/methodology/approach This study utilises UK Patient Opinion data to analyse the stories of 200 cancer patients. Using a critical incident technique, 1,207 attributes of experience quality are generated and classified into 17 quality dimensions across five stages of the customer (patient) journey. Findings Analysis reveals both similarity and difference in dimensions of experience quality across the patient journey: seven dimensions are common to all five journey stages, from receiving diagnosis to end of life care; ten dimensions were found to vary, present in one or several of the stages but not in all. Research limitations/implications Limitations include a lack of representativity of the story sample and the impossibility to verify the factual occurrence of the stories. Practical implications Adopting a patient journey perspective can improve the practitioner understanding of the design requirements of SDS in healthcare. The results of the study can be applied by managers to configure SDS that achieve a higher quality of patient care throughout the patient journey. Originality/value This paper extends existing literature on SDS design by adopting a customer journey perspective, revealing heterogeneity in experience quality across the customer journey currently unaccounted for in SDS design frameworks. Specifically, the findings challenge homogeneity in extant SDS design frameworks, evidencing the need for multiple, stage-specific SDS design requirements.

PurposeBased on social science theories of customer's action such as theory of planned behaviour, theory of reasoned action, and technology acceptance model, this paper adopts belief–attitude–intention model to study impact of perceived process-belief of different stages of e-service delivery system process (e-SDSP), i.e., searching process belief (SPB), agreement process belief (APB), fulfilment process belief (FPB) and after-sales service process belief (ASPB) on customer attitude and intention towards service providers. The study also focuses on the mediating effect of customer attitude on the relationship between process-beliefs of different stages of e-SDSP and their behavioural intention.Design/methodology/approachA quantitative method has been employed using data collected from 414 Indian e-retail customers. Structural equation modelling with bootstrap estimation is used to find the mediating effect of attitude.FindingsThe findings suggest that SPB and ASPB directly impact the customer attitude while APB and FPB directly impact the customer behavioural intention. The study also finds that customer attitude towards e-retailers fully mediates the effect of SPB and ASPB on the behavioural intention but there are no mediating effects for APB and FPB.Research limitations/implicationsThe sample used may not be generalizable for India, given its huge diversity and population. As the sample considers only Indian e-retail customers, this study may lack generalizability across countries.Originality/valueIn our knowledge, this study is the first step to conceptualize the process-oriented customer's perceived belief of different stages of e-SDSP and how these beliefs impact the customers' attitude and intention towards the e-retailers. The findings offer insight to managers on how they can create and cultivate customer happiness and positive behavioural intention by enhanced customer journey throughout the e-SDSP.