Janet McColl Kennedy, The University of Queensland, Australia
Suellen Hogan, The University of Queensland, Australia
Lars Witell, Linköping University
Hannah Snyder, The University of Queensland, Australia
Joseph Jacobson, Texas A&M University
Lisa Rotenstein, Texas A&M University
Leonard Berry, Texas A&M University
Bo Edvardsson, Karlstad University
Bård Tronvoll, Hedmark University College
Thorsten Gruber, The University of Manchester
Roger S. Ulrich, Texas A&M University
Leonard L. Berry, Texas A&M University
Xiaobo Quan, Center for Health Design
Janet Turner Parish, Texas A&M University
Robert F. Lusch, University of Arizona
Melissa Akaka, University of Denver
At a Center for Services Leadership conference a year ago, board member Jonathan Leighton M.D. commented that complex forces were pushing the healthcare industry away from a relational focus to a more transactional model. For the Mayo Clinic, where Dr. Leighton and his administrative colleague Thomas Welch led the Office of Mayo Clinic Experience, that would mean backing away from the patient-first credo that the clinic has embraced since its founding. Instead, Mayo was taking steps to resist the shift.
The service industry has an extensive history of being perceived as separate from the goods-centered industry. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, a need arose for marketing built on a goods-centered, manufacturing-based model of business, and since then, scholars have sought to create a subdiscipline for services marketing.
Service technologies are constantly being created and improved, which can provide a multitude of new opportunities for businesses, customers and users. However, businesses tend to lean towards focusing too much on technological improvements, as opposed to customer value. How then can organizations continue to benefit from advancements provided by new technologies, while remaining mindful of the value created for a consumer?
You arrive at your destination on time, but your luggage doesn’t—and when it does, it’s somebody else’s.
That’s a spectacular service failure, and one that’s easy to describe. But not all bad service experiences are as clear cut. Sometimes a customer will be unhappy about her interactions with your company, but she won’t be able to articulate why. Without specifics, it’s difficult to correct for a misstep.
In the past decade, few industries have grown as much as the sharing economy services (SESs) industry. SESs use cloud-based technology to match customers with providers that offer services such as house rentals, car rides and labor tasks. Some of the more popular SESs include Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb. Technological advances have helped lead to SESs explosive growth in the marketplace but SESs are not operating without challenges. According to the Associated Press, in 2017 Uber lost $4.5 billion on a gross revenue of $37 billion.
