Constructing Effective Customer Feedback Systems -- A Design Science Study Leveraging Blockchain Technology

Abstract

Organizations have to adjust to changes in the ecosystem, and customer feedback systems (CFS) provide important information to adapt products and services to changing customer preferences. However, current systems are limited to single-dimensional rating scales and are subject to self-selection biases. This work contributes design principles for CFS and implements a CFS that advances current systems by means of contextualized feedback according to specific organizational objectives. It also uses blockchain-based incentives to support CFS use. We apply Design Science Research (DSR) methodology and report on a longitudinal DSR journey considering multiple stakeholder values. We conducted expert interviews, design workshops, demonstrations, and a four-day experiment in an organizational setup, involving 132 customers of a major Swiss library. This validates the identified design principles and the implemented software artifact both qualitatively and quantitatively. Based on this evaluation, the design principles are revisited and conclusions for the construction of successful CFS are drawn. The findings of this work advance the knowledge on the design of CFS and provide a guideline to managers and decision makers for designing effective CFS.

Democracy by Design: Perspectives for Digitally Assisted, Participatory Upgrades of Society

“…A digitally upgraded democracy may leverage Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) to ensure values such as transparency, trust and autonomy by design [135][136][137][138]. In particular, DLT can be an enabling technology for a participatory Digital Democracy with novel governance mechanisms [139,140], for example by facilitating durable data storage and trusted computations [133,134,141].…”

“…As we have discussed, DLTs can be constructed in multiple ways, which is one of their great strenghts [142]. This flexibility of DLTs allows them to be tailored for specific applications, and are very suited to value-centric design [133,138]. In particular, DLTs can also contribute to the co-creation and co-evolution of a more circular and fair sharing economy [149].…”