Collaborative Research: Customer Efficiency and the Management of Multi-Channel Service Delivery Systems

现代服务业面临的一个重大挑战是提供高水平的客户服务，同时将服务交付成本降至最低。对于零售银行、经纪、包裹运输和零售贸易等面向交易的消费者服务企业来说尤其如此，在这些企业中，消费者可以频繁地与组织建立多个联系点。过去十年的一项重大服务创新是使用信息技术来支持客户自助服务。一个设计良好的多渠道服务交付系统，包括客户提供的自助服务和员工提供的全方位服务，可以同时降低成本和提高服务质量，并创造相关的好处，如增加客户保留率。这种自助服务激增的深刻影响从所谓的“自助经济”的强劲增长中可见一斑，这种经济几乎涉及所有主要的服务行业以及制造商的服务业务。虽然在许多行业中，提供多种服务渠道通常被视为竞争的需要，但在自助服务渠道的设计和管理方面，有相当大的自由裁量权。我们的研究将特别关注客户在服务联合生产中的作用，利用客户效率。高效率的客户能够以低成本共同生产所需的服务，因此，当给定的服务需求可行时，他们将倾向于不成比例地使用自助服务渠道。因此，衡量和提高客户效率对于成功提供以技术支持的自助服务为特色的服务来说变得非常重要。我们调查了零售银行业中以自助服务技术为特色的多渠道服务交付系统的设计和管理的一系列问题，零售银行业是这种转型的前沿行业。通过与行业参与者结成联盟，我们获得了有关客户利用银行服务渠道的前所未有的规模和范围的数据，以及我们合作机构的高级管理人员的积极参与，以最大限度地为行业实践做出贡献。这项工作的预期洞察力可以很容易地扩展到其他服务行业以及政府机构、制造公司的服务和支持运营，以及寻求通过提供自助服务来改善其服务运营的非商业组织。

A critical challenge for modern service industries is providing high levels of customer service while minimizing service delivery costs. This is especially true for transaction oriented consumer service businesses such as retail banking, brokerage, package transport, and retail trade in which consumers can have frequent and multiple points of contact with an organization. One significant service innovation over the last decade is the use of information technology to support customer self-service. A well designed multi-channel service delivery system, including both customer-provided self-service and employee-provided full-service, can simultaneously lower costs and improve service quality, as well as create related benefits such as increased customer retention. The profound impact of this proliferation of self-service is evident in the strong growth of the so-called "self-service economy" that involves almost all major service industries as well as the service operations of manufacturers.While offering multiple service channels is generally viewed as a competitive necessity in many industries, there is a considerable amount of discretion on the design and management of self-service channels. Our research will specifically focus on the role of the customer in service co-production, drawing on customer efficiency. Efficient customers are able to co-produce required services at a low cost and therefore will tend to disproportionately utilize self-service channels when it is feasible for a given service need. Therefore, it has become important to measure and improve customer efficiency for successful service delivery that features technology-enabled self-service. We investigate a series of issues in regard to the design and management of a multi-channel service delivery system featuring self-service technology in the retail banking industry, an industry at the forefront of this transformation. Through alliances forged with industry participants, we have access to data of unprecedented scale and scope on customer utilization of banking service channels and active participation of senior management at our partner institutions to maximize the contribution to industry practice. The expected insights from this work can be readily extended to other service industries as well as government institutions, service and support operations in manufacturing firms, and non-commercial organizations seeking to improve their service operations by offering self-service.