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Employee-Centric Service Innovation: A Viable Proxy for Customer-Intimacy for Product-Focused Enterprises

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Exploring Service Science (IESS 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 331))

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Abstract

Servitization has received significant attention from scholars and practitioners over the last decade. However, despite substantial research contributions in the fields of new service development and service innovation, product-focused small and medium-sized enterprises struggle to develop sophisticated service offerings. This paper attempts to better understand this discrepancy and suggests ways to overcome it. We have conducted a case study with a medium-sized manufacturing company that currently undertakes first steps in the development of advanced services. In terms of a theoretical contribution, our study indicates a limited understanding of the perceived value of services during the fuzzy front end of service innovation. Therefore, companies need to adopt new ways to understand their customers (i.e. increase customer intimacy). However, they often struggle to directly involve customers in the co-development of advanced services. In terms of a practical contribution, our research suggests that employee-centric service innovation—the idea of utilizing front line employees as proxies of customers—is a viable strategy to mitigate the identified challenges.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Karlsruhe Service Research Institute, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Kaiserstr. 12, 76131, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Michael Vössing, Jörg Siegel, Niels Feldmann & Carina Benz

  2. Industrial and Management Systems Engineering, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, 26506, USA

    Thorsten Wuest

Authors
  1. Michael Vössing
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  2. Jörg Siegel
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  3. Niels Feldmann
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  4. Thorsten Wuest
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  5. Carina Benz
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael Vössing .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Karlsruhe Service Research Institute (KSRI), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Gerhard Satzger

  2. INESC TEC, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Lia Patrício

  3. Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Mohamed Zaki

  4. Karlsruhe Service Research Institute (KSRI), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Niklas Kühl

  5. Karlsruhe Service Research Institute (KSRI), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Peter Hottum

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Vössing, M., Siegel, J., Feldmann, N., Wuest, T., Benz, C. (2018). Employee-Centric Service Innovation: A Viable Proxy for Customer-Intimacy for Product-Focused Enterprises. In: Satzger, G., Patrício, L., Zaki, M., Kühl, N., Hottum, P. (eds) Exploring Service Science. IESS 2018. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 331. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00713-3_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00713-3_7

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-00712-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-00713-3

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