The ever-changing CEB landscape

This thesis investigates a landscape – CEB – which amongst other is considered dynamic, iterative and decided by the context in which CEB occur.

The reason for investing resources into gaining an improved understanding of CEB is from the perspective of the firm a) to benefit from the indisputable potential value creation via CEB, b) to avoid harmful CEB (which would destroy value) and irrelevant CEB initiatives (which would lead to lost CEB value, and c) to figure out how to navigate in a reality where customers manifest CEB in a manner which is neither always consistent or sequential.

The value creation process as intended by the firm is sometimes found to be disrupted by CEB manifestations and the ‘new service relationship’, which entails (service) events of conflicting valence, probably requires managers to re-think the virtues of the traditional service relationship.

CEB is manifested at and across touch-points both in and outside the control of the firm.

Furthermore is CEB manifested at and across touch-points of a human and/or technological nature. CEB is hence facilitated and limited by the evolution (external to the firm) of touch-points, in particular online and technological touch-points.

The pointed out challenges with CEB indicate that it would be difficult for the firm to manage CEB based on a life cycle inspired approach since such an approach is based on pre-figured sequences and compliant adaption (as can be observed for the PLC curve, which is widely implemented by business managers to monitor for instance more traditional marketing initiatives in a sequential manner along the stages in the PLC curve).

This thesis discusses (‘Paper 3’) the concept of ‘customer journey’ as a managerial framework for mapping the customers’ activities, hence possibilities for value creation at touch-points along the customer journey. The concept of customer journey is as well a sequential model, which is unfolded in pre-figured phases. The customer journey revolves most often around the customer purchase situation, and specifies ‘what happens’ at touch-points before, during and after the customer purchase situation. It can be observed that the concept of customer journey has been widely adopted in business (McKinsey&Company 2016) and that the academic literature as well has embraced the concept.

As elaborated in ‘Paper 3’ does the sequential or ‘life cycle’ approach entail problems for managers, who wish to manage CEB better. CEB is de facto manifested at touch-points of various sorts, in and outside the control of the firm, and of a human and/or technological nature. The problem arises because customers rarely follow the pre-figured sequences

sketched by the firm in terms of which touch-points they are active at when manifesting CEB, and because customers’ CEB manifestations are indeed related to many other situations than the purchase situation, such as ‘I need an overview situation’ or ‘I need to have the product installed’ (cf. ‘Paper 3’). Furthermore are customers active not only at singular touch-points, but across touch-points, when they are in a certain ‘customer situation’. From the perspective of the customer is the goal to fulfill the issue in the customer situation at and across the touch-points they find best suited to achieve fulfillment. The number of touch-touch-points at and across which the customer is active is found to be relatively low (typically less than five), which should make the managerial task doable. This group of touch-points is in this thesis coined

‘customer arenas’, which represents the group of touch-points where a customer would be active in a non sequential manner and tied only to a certain customer situation.

By adopting the concept of ‘customer arenas’ as a managerial tool for managing CEB better, the firm would take up a functional approach. The firm would envision (and

investigate) the relevant customer situations and the relevant touch-points, for the customer situations respectively. Furthermore, the firm would envision (and investigate) how to stimulate favorable CEB by understanding what from the customer perspective makes sense at and across the touch-points ( for instance that touch-points are ‘co-ordinated’ when the customer situation is ‘I need installment of a service’ and ‘connected’ when the customer situation is ‘I need an overview’ cf. Table 3 in ‘Paper 3’).

From a narrow customer arena perspective – that is ‘what happens’ inside the customer arena at and across touch-points ? – it would be crucial for the firm to understand the conflicting valences sometimes co-created at various touch-points. (An example of conflict

across touch-points in a customer arena could be the presence of an ‘expert customer’ inclined to give feedback, but same customer is helpless when it comes to self service technology and hence refrains from giving feedback and even flips to the dark side and participate in

negatively valenced word of mouth). This pluralistic nature of ‘what happens’ inside the customer arenas respectively should be carefully investigated and understood by the firm.

(‘Paper 2’) in order to reduce conflicting events

In a larger perspective is the firm, its customers and the concept of customer arenas under the constant influence of a landscape in flux. The evolution in technology and fast adaption of various technological solutions in general (streaming of movies solutions, surveillance of health related conditions) via online solutions affect the participants and the way they interact today, and how they would be expecting to interact tomorrow (and in the future), also with their financial services provider and telecommunication provider. This entails for the firm who wishes to improve the management of CEB to investigate the behaviors at and across touch-points in the customer arenas and to update the nature of the touch-points in accordance with the technological evolution in general and not only compared with the touch-points offered by the competitors or touch-points where the competitors are active.

Since customers’ CEB manifestations as a phenomenon has entered the scene and could be argued to have turned the service relationship into a ‘plethora of (service) events’ taking place at and across touch-points in an inconsistent and non sequential manner, this thesis suggests business managers to adopt the concept of customer arenas as a possible managerial framework. Customer arenas could create the best possible and relevant point of departure for value creation via CEB.

Customer arenas should be implemented with an agile mindset with managers. Business managers should understand customer arenas from both a narrow perspective - which entails conflict and pluralistic customer behaviors across touch-points in the arena - ; and from the larger perspective -which entails that the composition, the nature and ‘what happens’ at and across touch-points in the arena are impacted by evolution in for instance technology and Lifestyle; and customers’ adoption of various new ways of interacting with firms, with other customers and other entities (e.g. governmental bodies or organizations of a non commercial nature).

Business managers would have to manage CEB best possible in this ever changing landscape. The scope of the CEB landscape is illustrated just beneath in Figure 5. ‘The ever- changing CEB landscape’.

Figure 5. The ever changing CEB landscape.

Descriptions and key-words are adopted from Van de Veen and Poole (1995)