Toward a more balanced customer perspective on automated service interactions

Abstract

Service automation, which can be defined as the replacement of frontline service employees by technologies, is (becoming) business practice and service providers cannot afford to ignore this anymore due to increasing human labor costs; the Great Attrition or Great Resignation; enhanced technological capabilities; and declining costs of technologies. Although service providers might find the prospect of cost reductions and increased efficiency/productivity alluring, they must take into consideration that service automation influences the interactions and relationships between customers and service providers in the organizational frontline. Hence, service providers should not rush into service automation but have to understand how customers evaluate automated service interactions.

Although prior frameworks and studies contribute to our understanding of the customer perspective on service automation, we noticed that most of them only focus on customers’ positive perceptions related to technology acceptance and usage. However, only focusing on the positive antecedents could result in an overly positive understanding of the customer perspective on service automation. With this research gap in mind, this doctoral research aims to contribute to service theory and practice by providing a more comprehensive and balanced understanding of customer perspectives on automated service interactions by considering both positive and negative implications of automated service interactions. By taking this two-sided customer perspective, this doctoral dissertation empirically investigates how firms can overcome two key challenges on the road to service automation success: when to automate and how to automate.