The value co-creation scholarly work has been criticized for neglecting the possible failures in the collaborative value creation process, which is termed as ‘value co-destruction’. Additionally, both the value co-creation and available limited research work in value co-destruction have overly attended on actor-to-actor interactions taking place in traditional service encounters, disregarding the practical movement towards the provision of services via technological platforms. Though there are ample studies that recognize factors influencing customer acceptance or rejections of technologies, a very limited number of studies have focused on exploring how and why customer collaboration with self-service technologies (SSTs) goes wrong due to the failures in the co-creation process. Therefore, this study attempts to understand how ‘value co-destruction’ takes place in the SSTs. Following a qualitative inquiry, using semi-structured interviews with 25 individuals, 15 reasons for co-destruction that vary among different customer demographics were found and classified into four integrative themes as ‘inabilities in co-learning’, ‘poor co-operation’, ‘problems with connecting’ and ‘poor corrective actions’. The findings fill the gap in the literature by addressing value co-destruction in technological interfaces, particularly in the SST context. Further, it will help practitioners to design and deliver value-enhancing self-service technological interfaces, resulting in none or minimum difficulties for customers.

Most of the service organizations are now moving to provide their services at a remote basis with Self-Service Technologies (SSTs). This is a natural outcome of technological maturity and would be the norm of many service transactions in future. Currently in many of the services, customers have the choice to use either SSTs or physical service encounters with service employees according to their desire. However, the future is predicted to replace many service employees with self-service machines and humanoid robots. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the service organizations to make their customers ready for such a future. Use of self-service technologies typically take place without the presence of organization’s service staff. Thus, machines should provide necessary guidance and instructions to customers so that they can perform well without difficulties. If SSTs are not rich with information, customers would be in trouble without proceeding with their transactions successfully. Therefore, the quality of information would be a matter for successful online based self -service transactions. Thus, the aim of this study is to understand the information richness in online based self-service technologies from the customer perspective. Using the qualitative approach, semi structured interviews were conducted with 25 individuals who have experience in using online based SSTs. The study found seven key factors which determine the richness of information in online platforms namely ‘Relevance, Timeliness, Accuracy, Clarity, Consistency, Sufficiency and Simplicity’. The study enriches the theoretical landscapes by broadening the understanding on significance of information richness in accepting online based self-service technologies while on practical ground provides insights for service providers in designing their SSTs with rich and necessary information which is required to perform successful transactions.

Many service encounters are moving from traditional physical interfaces to technologically incorporated self-service options. However, it is surprising that very limited extant literature is devoted to understanding the movement towards self-service technologies. Therefore, this study aims at understanding customer value co-creation intention, practices including both the value co-creation and co-destruction and their co-creation experiences in self-service technology context. Based on the positivistic approach, a quantitative study carried out distributing self-administered questionnaires to 600 individuals chosen based on a non-probabilistic convenience sampling method. Study found that customer value co-creation intention has significant positive effects on customer value co-creation practices and significant negative effects on customer value co-destruction in SSTs. Value co-creation practices show a strong positive effect on customer functional experiences and ‘positive emotional experiences’ while having a negative effect on ‘negative emotional experiences. In contrast, co-destruction shows inverse relationships. This study assists practitioners to understand why customers collaborate with SSTs, what they do in co-creating value and how this links with their experience. Service providers can use this understanding to facilitate customer co-creation by securing positive customer experiences and achieving competitive advantage by designing and delivering value enhancing self-service technological interfaces from both strategic and operational perspectives.

Many service encounters that service employees previously managed are being transformed into technology-enabled self-service interactions, including those in the banking sector. However, scholarly work has not paid sufficient attention to studying Self-Service Technologies (SSTs) in service encounters. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate the practices that customers engage in co-creating value with SSTs in the banking sector, along with prerequisite capabilities that customers must possess to complete successful service transactions. A qualitative approach was used, conducting semi-structured interviews with 50 banking customers who use SSTs in the Western Province, Sri Lanka. The study found seven key-value co-creation practices and five types of capabilities an individual should possess to use banking SSTs. The findings contribute to the existing literature by addressing the prerequisites and practices of customer value co-creation in banking SSTs, which have received sporadic attention.

Modern-day customers engage with a multitude of service transactions in technological interfaces performing with Self-Service Technologies (STTs). Nevertheless, many are not conversant with the use of technologies and are willing to use traditional physical service encounters, particularly those that live in developing countries. Since business organizations spend a vast amount of money to transform their traditional physical interfaces into technological-based self-service outlets, it is vital and necessary to make sure that customers willingly move along with this new trend. To accept SSTs, customer should feel comfortable with it, which require knowledge, skills and experiences on how to use such technologies. Since customer learning in SSTs is largely self-directed and experience-based, organizations should understand how customers naturally engage with SSTs and the role important organizations have to play in motivating customer self-learning process in SSTs.Thus, this study aims at investigating the customer learning in self-service technologies based on Self Directed Learning Theory. Accordingly, application of motivation, self- management, and self-monitoring on customer self-learning at SSTs were investigated. Using a quantitative approach, self-administered questionnaires were distributed among 600 individuals selected, based on non-probabilistic convenience method. The Study found that customer learning at SSTs mainly influenced by their motivation and self-management skills.This study contributes to theory by explaining the customer self-learning at SSTs, which is very limited in the literature. Further, it helps practitioners to understand how customer learning takes place at SSTs and therefore to decide on what should be the focus of the organization in designing customer communications aiming at providing a supportive learning experience to the customer.