Service Design for Customer Surrogate Interaction: design characteristics for customer acceptance

Abstract

The objective of this research is to identify the service design characteristics that provide competitive advantage to organisations in the digital economy. These characteristics relate to the customer and mediating technology interactions that provide resilience, trust and privacy. What are the service design characteristics for customer and mediating technology service systems? A literature review and case studies are used to explore design characteristics for technology-enabled interactions. This research aims to develop a conceptual framework for service design characteristics. The interactions of people, technology and organisations is a socio technical system that forms networks and interactions [1]. These networks of people and digitally enabled devices provide interactive services. The Unified Services Theory (UST) provides a theoretical lens to view service systems [2]. Digital devices require customers to provide inputs, these inputs are themselves, their possessions and their information. Interactions occur between entities creating service processes. These can be mapped using the process chain network (PCN) methodology [3]. Entities can be customers, providers and physical devices. The methodology enables mapping of service processes between entities. These interactions receive and process customer inputs to coproduce service. These interactions occur in the direct and surrogate regions of the PCN diagram, Figure 1.