Purpose -Customer experience has become increasingly important for service organizations that see it as a source of sustainable competitive advantage, and for service designers, who consider it fundamental to any service design project. Design/methodology/approach -Integrating contributions from different fields, CEM was conceptually developed to represent the different aspects of customer experience in a holistic diagrammatic representation. CEM was further developed with an application to a multimedia service. To further develop and build CEM's models, 17 customers of a multimedia service provider were interviewed and the data were analyzed using Grounded Theory methodology. Findings -Combining multidisciplinary contributions to represent customer experience elements enables the systematization of its complex information. The application to a multimedia service highlights how CEM can facilitate the work of multidisciplinary design teams by providing more insightful inputs to service design. Originality/value -CEM supports the holistic nature of customer experience, providing a systematic portrayal of its context and shifting the focus from single experience elements to their orchestration.

The COVID‐19 pandemic situation has pushed many higher education institutions into a fast‐paced, and mostly unstructured, emergency remote education process. In such an unprecedented context, it is important to understand how technology is mediating the educational process and how teachers and students are experiencing the change brought by the pandemic. This research aims to understand how the learning was mediated by technology during the early stages of the pandemic and how students and teachers experienced this sudden change. Data were collected following a qualitative research design. Thirty in‐depth and semi‐structured interviews (20 students and 10 teachers) were obtained and analysed following a thematic analysis approach. Results provide evidence on the adoption of remote education technologies due to the pandemic with impacts on the education process, ICT platforms usage and personal adaptation. The emergency remote education context led to mixed outcomes regarding the education process. Simultaneously, ICT platforms usage was mostly a positive experience and personal adaptation was mostly a negative experience. These results bring new insights for higher education organizations on actions they could take, such as curating the learning experience with standard, institutional‐wide platforms, appropriate training for students and teachers, and suitable remote evaluation practices. Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic The COVID‐19 pandemic has pushed the world's education environment into an unstructured, emergency remote education process. There is a lack of understanding of how ICT tools mediated learning during pandemic's early stages and how actors experienced this sudden change. In technology‐mediated learning contexts, participant beliefs, knowledge, practices and the environment mutually influence one another and affect the lived experience. What this paper adds The paper identifies and characterizes the educational process, the technological tools used in this new educational setting and personal adaptation of higher education students and teachers during these unprecedented times. The results show the following: an increase in teacher–student interaction (outside classes), new opportunities and content development; difficulties in control evaluation fraud, constraints in attaining the desired learning outcomes and lack of training; resilience to adapt and adopt the new technologies, despite the negative personal experience lived in terms of productivity, motivation, workload and mental health. Implications for practice and/or policy The paper makes evidence‐based recommendations on how higher education institutions can leverage this experience to prepare for future disruptions and increase the use of ICT tools in their regula...

In the increasingly complex service environment, value is cocreated through webs of interactions between provider networks and customer networks. This is evident in healthcare services, where well-being can be achieved only through the joint efforts of professional healthcare networks and patient networks. Addressing the challenge of creating network-level services, the service design for value networks (SD4VN) method designs services as enablers of many-to-many value cocreating interactions among network actors. By integrating previous research on value networks and service design, SD4VN develops a process and a set of models beyond supporting dyadic (customer–service provider) interactions to understanding the interrelated activities, interactions, and goals of network actors and designing services to support the different actors in reaching their goals with balanced centricity. Following a design science research approach, this paper presents the SD4VN method and reports on a case application of the method used to design the Portuguese national electronic health record service Plataforma de Dados da Saúde (PDS). The case application involved focus groups, in-depth interviews, and participatory design sessions with over 170 participants at different service design stages, showing the importance of designing a balanced, integrated service. The case application also shows how SD4VN can support a wider adoption of the service and improve the health service system.

PurposeThis article aims to synthesize and integrate current research on customer experience (CX), identifying the intellectual structure of the field, systematizing a conceptual framework and identifying future research opportunities.Design/methodology/approachTo analyze 629 articles published in peer-reviewed journals in almost four decades, this study employs both bibliometric co-keyword and thematic literature analysis in a complementary way.FindingsThis article maps the CX literature by describing its intellectual structure in terms of three research domains (customer, organizational and technological), their corresponding most relevant research themes and topics. Moreover, this study develops a conceptual framework and research propositions to summarize and integrate the CX literature. This work recognizes technology as an important driver for the development of CX research. Lastly, this article provides future research opportunities for moving the field forward, considering an integrative view among domains.Originality/valueThis paper complements other reviews on CX by using a novel methodological approach (co-keyword and thematic analysis) that enables the identification and visualization of the CX intellectual structure. In addition, the study explores the increasing connection between technology and CX research, by raising evidence that technology, by continuously modifying services and consequently CX, has become a transversal component in the research field. These outcomes may be useful for academics and practitioners.

PurposeThis article provides an in-depth understanding of customer experience with smart services, examines customer perceptual responses to smart and connected service environments and enriches this understanding by outlining how contextual factors (in terms of goals, activities, actors and artifacts) influence the customer experience.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopts a qualitative approach in order to understand customer experience in the smart energy service setting. Semi-structured interviews and focus groups were conducted with 31 participants forming three groups of energy service customers: advanced smart energy (ASE) customers, electric mobility (EM) customers and high-consumption (HC) customers.FindingsThe findings show that customer experience with smart services involves a multidimensional set of perceptual responses, comprising specific smart service dimensions (e.g. controllability, visibility, autonomy); relationship dimensions (relationships with the service provider and with the community); and traditional technology-enabled service dimensions (e.g. ease of use, accessibility). The analysis of contextual factors such as goals, activities, actors and artifacts shows that smart services enable a more autonomous experience, wherein customers can integrate a myriad of actors and artifacts and expect the main service provider to support them in taking the lead.Originality/valueSmart technologies have profoundly changed the service environment, but research on customer experience with smart services is scarce. This study characterizes smart services, provides an in-depth understanding of customer experience in this new context, and discusses relevant implications for management and service research.

Purpose Service design is a multidisciplinary approach that is key to service innovation, as it brings new service ideas to life. In this context, the development of new service design methods and models for creating new service futures is an important stream of service design research. Such developments can benefit from a systematized research methodology that builds on existing knowledge and robustly evaluates the suitability of research contributions. To address this challenge, the purpose of this paper is to present design science research (DSR), an established methodology from the information systems field, and examine how it can be useful for service design research by supporting the development of new artifacts, such as service design constructs, methods and models. Design/methodology/approach This paper presents DSR and related literature and shows how DSR can support service design research through a step-by-step approach. A methodology to develop prescriptive-driven solutions for classes of problems, DSR can support service design research in developing rigorous and relevant research. One illustrative example of a service design research effort using the DSR approach is presented. Findings Building on DSR’s robust methodological background, this paper discusses how DSR can support service design research, namely, through the development of new methods and models, and how DSR can be adapted to leverage service design research participatory, iterative, human-centric and creative approach. Originality/value This paper provides an overview of DSR and proposes it as a methodology to conduct service design research, offering step-by-step guidance on the application of DSR in service design research and discussing how it can be adapted according to the specific characteristics of service design research and drive future research.

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As technology innovation rapidly changes service experiences, service designers need to leverage technology and orchestrate complex service systems to create innovative services while enabling seamless customer experiences. Service design builds upon contributions from multiple fields, including management, information technology, and interaction design. Still, more integration to leverage the role of technology for service innovation is needed. This article integrates these two service design perspectives, management and interaction design, into an interdisciplinary method—the Management and INteraction Design for Service (MINDS). Using a design science research approach, MINDS synthesizes management perspective models, which focus on creating new value propositions and orchestrating multiple service interfaces, with interaction design perspective models, which focus on technology usage and its surrounding context. This article presents applications of the MINDS method in two different service industries (media and health care) to demonstrate how MINDS enables creating innovative technology-enabled services and advances interdisciplinary service research.