Faithful readers of CBR know that one of my main research and consulting interests pertains to the use of IT as an enabler of customer service and service delivery. With my colleagues Kathryn Brohman, Rick Watson, and A. Parasuraman, and more recently with my doctoral student Iris Lui, I have been studying the effect of technology and telecommunication advances on customer service and service delivery. We coined the notion of Network-based Customer Service Systems (NCSS) as: "a network-based computerized information system that delivers service to a customer either directly (e.g., via a browser, PDA, or cell phone) or indirectly (e.g., via a service representative or agent accessing the system)." 1
This issue on IT services and service functionality is a long overdue addition to the CBR literature. The very first issue under my editorship (Vol. 5, No. 10, October 2005) on the business value of customer data stemmed from the realization that we are increasingly servicing customers directly through IT-enabled means and indirectly by way of IT-enabled customer service personnel. This proliferation of IT-enabled touch points creates the foundation for what Rick and I are increasingly calling "born digital data" or "digital data genesis."2 This proliferation of customer data that is natively digital enables strategic options that were simply not feasible before.
Beyond data analysis opportunities, IT enables and transforms customer service functionality and, as a consequence, the customer service encounter. This transformation is evident all around us, from self-service kiosks at airports, to TripIt's mobile platform for itinerary management, to online recommendation systems, to interactive table computing (i.e., Microsoft Surface) in hotel and casino lobbies. Yet, we at CBR have not done an issue on this topic -- mea culpa! I think that the long wait will not be in vain though, as we have a duo of experts to make sense of this world for us as well as some really interesting and surprising results.
Before getting to our experts on this issue, let me explain why I think that the tide of IT-enabled customer service is never going to recede and why this is the right time to seriously engage in the development of new customer service systems. I believe that the world radically changed with the dot-com days. Yes, there was the irrational exuberance stage, there was the overbuilding of telecom, there were the paper napkin-based, not-so-well-thought-out business models, there was the greed and excess, and so on. Yet, after the crash, what was left was a consumer and employee base that understood the potential for IT-enabled service and was comfortable with seeking help through an IT interface -- particularly in the economies where e-commerce had really taken off and Internet adoption was high. In a 31 May 2005 issue of the New York Times, I was quoted as saying that self-service hotel kiosks "had been fired twice before" (this is what a talented journalist will do with what was probably a much less intriguing quote from me), but that this third time may be the charm. In other words, while kiosks had proven premature in the 1980s and 1990s, in 2005 there was a substantial portion of the customer base that felt comfortable receiving hospitality and service from a machine -- so much so that the major hotel chains were already onto the next evolution of the kiosk: Web checking and room selection.
With this issue of Cutter Benchmark Review, we bring you two experts on this important issue of IT-enabled customer service. Our academic expert contributor is Ron Cenfetelli, Assistant Professor of Management Information Systems at the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia (Canada). Ron, whom I have known for about five years now, has made IT-enabled service the basis of his academic research agenda and is an expert on this subject. We have finally found a way to collaborate, and we are working together on evaluating how service leaders use their Web sites as a service delivery mechanism -- a line of work that extends both Ron's and my previous research. Our contributor from the practicing side is Peter McGarahan, founder and president of McGarahan & Associates, a firm that focuses on helping organizations achieve service and support value, and retired chairman of the IT Infrastructure Management Association. Pete is a 23-year veteran of the IT industry and an established coach and speaker.
In the tradition of CBR academic contributors, Ron begins his article with an overview of the domain and the state of the art of the research in this area -- to which he himself has contributed. He introduces the concept of service functionality and describes fairly precisely the many ways in which IT can be used in customer service delivery. While his focus is on Web sites, the context of much of his work and the principles he describes are general and tend to apply to all IT-enabled delivery channels. With this discussion as the basis, Ron analyzes and comments on the survey results. I think that you will find both the results, and Ron's evaluation, enlightening. To those of you who think that his frameworks are commonsense, wait till you see responses from organizations around the world!
Pete's contribution has a broader scope and, using the service-profit chain as a guide, he discusses the role of IT in service and service delivery. Pete also discusses several best-in-class examples of firms that are leading the charge on the use of IT for customer service and comments on the value of IT maturity in making customer service a driver for the firm's strategy. With these frameworks as a guide, Pete examines the survey results and concludes with a call to action and some guidelines that I think you will find very valuable.
The topic of IT-enabled service delivery is, and will continue to be, a critical one for modern organizations under ever-increasing pressure to efficiently improve service. While we made our readers wait for our take on this topic, I hope you will agree that the quality of this issue makes it worth the wait.
ENDNOTES
1 Piccoli, G., K.M. Brohman, R. Watson, and A. Parasuraman. "Net-Based Customer Service Systems: Evolution and Revolution in Web Site Functionalities." Decision Sciences, Vol. 35, No. 3, 2004, pp. 423-455.
2 Piccoli, Gabriele, and Richard T. Watson. "Profit from Customer Data by Identifying Strategic Opportunities and Adopting the `Born Digital' Approach." MIS Quarterly Executive, Vol. 7, No. 3, 2008, pp. 113-122.
