Techno Service Worlds? Digitization of Service Businesses

In this chapter, the focus is on exploring the role that technological innovation—including big data, robotics, artificial intelligence, online platforms and algorithms—has played in the emergence of new service business models and in new forms of service business and work. The emphasis is on the digitization of service operational processes and their impacts. This is a tension between the role service workers play in creating and delivering service experiences through face-to-face encounters versus the substitution of service workers by technology. On the one hand, service customization and the quality of a service experience is still founded around interactions between service producers and service consumers. On the other hand, there is the emergence of service encounters in which service workers are a hidden rather than a visible part of the service experience. Reading and managing service businesses must include an appreciation of the ways in which technological innovation is transforming the management of service businesses. Electronic Supplementary Material The online version of this chapter (10.1007/978-3-030-52060-1_4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.