Service Innovation Mechanism Based on Customer-Employee Interaction

Creative customers could exert its role more powerfully when involved in the service innovation process. In industrialised services activities designed for customers, the success of the innovation depends on, besides the traditional factors used, the way the customers deal with the innovation especially in high-contact service industry. The intangibility characteristic of service brings the service receiver and the customer into contact with the service production process where the service provider has the ultimate responsibility of the service environment and the service delivery process. Customers is a key external resources for service innovation. In the process of service production and consumption there exists unseparate interaction between customers and employees. For service firms the interaction of employees and customers is concomitant with service production and consumption. So customers play an important role in service innovation. Based on prior research the paper will discuss why service innovation should be based on customer-employee interaction and propose the service innovation model in terms of customer-employee interaction. Some depiction of components in the model will be provided.