{"id":13036,"date":"2023-08-23T07:12:52","date_gmt":"2023-08-23T11:12:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/?p=13036"},"modified":"2023-08-24T05:38:47","modified_gmt":"2023-08-24T09:38:47","slug":"the-delicate-dance-of-managing-customer-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/2023\/08\/the-delicate-dance-of-managing-customer-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"The Delicate Dance of Managing Customer Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Guest article by Yasin Sahhar, finalist of the 2023 SERVSIG Best Dissertation Award<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being a finalist for the SERVSIG Best Dissertation Award is a great privilege. I once again thank the flourishing SERVSIG community for this recognition. My Ph.D. research is entitled \u201c<\/em>Understanding and Managing Customer Experience in Practice \u2013 A Phenomenological Inquiry<\/a>.\u201d<\/em> I was invited to share some reflections on my research, and I am happy to do so in two blog posts. The first<\/a> was recently published and is about understanding<\/em> experience in practice. This second blog post zeros in on managing<\/em> experience throughout the customer journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boundary condition: a deep understanding of customer experience in practice<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Customer experience (management) is critical for firms and can potentially create a competitive edge (De Keyser et al., 2020; Lemon & Verhoef, 2016). Managing customer experience and skillfully offering compelling customer experiences can reap massive benefits for organizations (Williams et al., 2020). However, this is not as easy as it may sound. As I pointed out in the previous blog post, organizations should first \u2013 and continuously \u2013 focus on creating a deep and human-centered understanding through analytics and interpretation of experience in practice, and how it evolves in today\u2019s dynamic world. This is and should be the first boundary condition before even thinking of anticipating customer experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The balancing act of anticipating customer experience<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Managing customer experience is an ambidextrous endeavor\u00a0(Sahhar, 2022). In\u00a0our paper,\u00a0we show that customer experience management throughout the customer journey is a balancing act\u00a0between distinct modes of organization and engagement\u00a0(Sahhar et al., 2021).\u00a0Service managers can organize their practices around ad hoc\u00a0and regular practices, and they can engage in reactive and proactive manners. We found that reactive\u00a0engagement\u00a0restores customer experience, and proactive\u00a0engagement\u00a0bolsters\u00a0customer experience. The figure below depicts this balancing act of anticipating customer experience. The balancing act refers to the ambidextrous and systematic act of continuously combining and switching back and forth between the practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sophisticated interventions can positively trigger customer experience<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Anticipating on customer experience necessitates consistent and delicate harmonization with the customer\u2019s value creation and destruction practices. Strategic and successful customer experience management is not solely about creating memorable or frictionless experiences; it involves the risk of structural unreflective \u2013 taken-for-granted \u2013 customer experiences (Sahhar & Loohuis, 2022). To mitigate this risk demands for mental and organizational flexibility in which marketing managers should pay structural attention to what and how customers experience in their value co-creation and co-destruction practice. Additionally, what we coin as \u2018artificial practice interruptions\u2019 of a mild nature can act as sophisticated managerial triggers to incept the customer\u2019s experience positively. So much so that it may create customer delight. For instance, a welcome drink at the check-in counter of a hotel or an insurance provider \u2013 usually in the background when no problems arise \u2013 prompts customers with a notification and a gesture of appreciation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conquering the Herculean task<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Although my research offers insights to understand better, orchestrate, recover, and positively influence customer experience, I argue that it certainly is a Herculean task. Surmounting this strenuous undertaking calls for outstanding effort and perseverance. The indispensable starting point for conquering this task is to deeply comprehend the nature, characteristics, and fine nuances of customer experience. The combination of advanced technologies (e.g., AI) and human-centered approaches (e.g., phenomenological inquiries) offers way to do so. Service providers\u2019 practices of different natures, in conjunction with the customers\u2019 experience and practice, can set the correct parameters for facilitating positive customer experiences and anticipating the somewhat erratic nature of customer experience. This demands multi-level responsibility, i.e., front-line employees, middle management, and strategic guardians. Can firms join this delicate dance in the adventurous journey of \u2018managing\u2019 customer experience?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Yasin Sahhar<\/a>
Assistant Professor in Marketing and Service Research
University of Twente, The Netherlands


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