Customer Processes in Business-to-Business Service Transactions 2006th Edition
Author(s): Janine Frauendorf (Author), Prof. Dr. Michael Kleinaltenkamp (Foreword)
Publisher: Deutscher Universitätsverlag
Publication Date: 24 Nov. 2006
Edition: 2006th
Language: English
Print length: 318 pages
ISBN-10: 9783835006010
ISBN-13: 9783835006010
Book Description
Services cannot be produced without customer participation. This aspect involves significant consequences for services management. The integration of the customer and the integration of the external resources that customers need to provide require comprehensive means to coordinate the activities of suppHers and customers. Services management Hterature is based on the idea that the success of service companies mainly depends on an effective and efficient design of supplier and customer interfaces. As a result, academic and practice-oriented service management problems are concerned with managing service processes. However, most approaches are focused on the supplier process side. Here, numerous concepts as well as IT supported tools for service process documentation and service process management have been developed. Customer processes, on the contrary, have mostly been ignored even though it is obvious that they have a high impact on the overall success of the service process. The present work is a major step forward to close that research gap. The author analyses the customer influence on efficiency and effectiveness of the service process depending on the customer’s service process knowledge. The empirical data of the thesis was gained from a practice study: it was made in cooperation with a corporate division of T-Systems International that provides business customers with virus wall and firewall service packages for data network security. The study is based on the assumption that service customers have a script, i. e. a relatively precise image of the structure and process of the service transaction.
Editorial Reviews
From the Back Cover
Services cannot be produced without the participation of the customer. The customer’s impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of the service process implies significant consequences for service process management. Due to this fact, customer processes need to be taken more into account.
Janine Frauendorf analyzes how customer processes can be used to optimize the overall service process. In this context, the service blueprint represents the key tool of the thesis – originally a tool for designing and optimizing the internal process of the service operator, it is now extended by the customer process side. Transaction cost theory, as the link between supplier process and customer process, on the one hand and the script construct from cognitive psychology on the other, provide the theoretical basis for the thesis. On the basis of empirical results, the author presents significant implications for services research and helpful suggestions for business practice.
About the Author
Dr. Janine Frauendorf promovierte bei Prof. Dr. Michael Kleinaltenkamp am Institut für Marketing der Freien Universität Berlin. Sie ist freiberuflich als Koordinatorin für das Journal of Business Market Managemt (JBM) tätig.
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