Customer Journeys: A Systematic Literature Review

Purpose – Customer journeys has become an increasingly important topic in service management and design. The study reviews customer journey terminology and approaches within the research literature prior to 2013, mainly from the fields of design, management, and marketing. Design/methodology/approach - The study was conducted as a systematic literature review. Searches in Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Knowledge, ACM Digital Library, and ScienceDirect identified 45 papers for analysis. The papers were analysed with respect to customer journey terminology and approaches, the relation to customer experience, the referenced background, and the use of visualizations. Findings – Across the reviewed literature, customer journeys are described not only as a means to take the viewpoint of the customer, but also to reach insight into their experiences. A rich and at times incoherent customer journey terminology is analysed and discussed, as are two emerging customer journey approaches: customer journey mapping (analysis of a service process "as is") and customer journey proposition (generative activities leading towards a possible service "to be"). Research limitations/implications – The review is limited to analysing and making claims on research papers that explicitly apply the term customer journey. In most of the reviewed papers, customer journeys are not the main object of interest but are discussed as one of several topics. Practical implications - A nuanced discussion of customer journey terminology and approaches is provided, supporting the practical application of a customer journey perspective. Originality/value - The review contributes a needed common basis for future customer journey research and practice.acceptedVersio

Norsk språk i eit taleteknologisk perspektiv

Denne artikkelen skildrar fyrst korleis talesyntese og automatisk talegjenkjenning er bygd opp, og drøftar deretter kva for verknader slik taleteknologi kan få for norsk språk. Automatisk talegjenkjenning for generell diktering («tale-til-tekst») er den delen av taleteknologien som kan påverke språket mest. Men programvare for generell norsk diktering finst ikkje enno. Ein av årsakene til dette har vore manglande språkteknologisk infrastruktur i form av ein norsk språkbank, som vart etablert fyrst i 2010. Håpet er at me får samla inn og systematisert språkdata frå heile landet slik at norske talegjenkjennarar kan lærast opp til å kunne tolke dei ulike uttalevariantane i norsk

Design Feedback from Users Through an Online Social Platform: Benefits and Limitations

Online social platforms, such as blogs, discussion forums and social networking sites, are increasingly explored as venues for user-centred evaluations; in particular, for design feedback from users. We present a multi-case study providing needed knowledge on such evaluations. Our findings are based on analyses of the design feedback and post-factum data collections with development team representatives and users. The development team representatives reported as key benefits that the evaluations provided insight into users’ needs and competencies, input into ongoing design discussions and support for idea generation in the development team, but found the lack of direct contact and control with the users to be an important limitation. The users appreciated the opportunity to contribute to the design process, but the majority reported not to build on each other's contributions. Involving a relatively large number of users was found to be beneficial for generating constructive design suggestions. Practical implications and future research challenges are suggested.acceptedVersio

Understanding the user experience of customer service chatbots: What can we learn from customer satisfaction surveys?

Understanding and improving user experience is key to strengthening uptake and realizing the potential of chatbots for customer service. In this paper, we investigate customer satisfaction surveys as a source of insight into such user experience. A total of 5,687 customer satisfaction reports on users’ interactions with a customer service chatbot, and the corresponding chatbot interactions, are analyzed. The findings demonstrate that customer satisfaction reports are closely associated with the degree to which the problems motivating users’ chatbot interactions are resolved. Furthermore, the findings show substantial variation in the performance of different chatbot intents in terms of customer satisfaction and problem resolution. This implies that user experience varies substantially depending on the problems motivating users to interact with the chatbot. Finally, we identify key characteristics of the intents associated with particularly high or low customer experience, suggesting paths towards efficient improvement of chatbot user experience. Based on the findings, we point to key implications for theory and practice and suggest directions for future research.acceptedVersio

Applying Transactional NPS for Customer Journey Insight: Case Experiences and Lessons Learnt

While the concept of “customer journeys” is widely taken up to support service design and management, practical frameworks for routine monitoring of customer experience in the context of customer journeys are lacking. This article proposes a framework for applying the widely used transactional Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a means for gathering insight into customers' experiences of a customer journey. We present lessons learnt from three case trials of the framework elements within a telecom service provider, involving the analysis of more than 1,700 quantitative and qualitative customer responses from transactional NPS surveys.pplying Transactional NPS for Customer Journey Insight: Case Experiences and Lessons LearntacceptedVersio

Using the Net Promoter Score to support service design: Digging for gold in customer free-text reports

Customer research is key to service design. However, current methods to obtain in-depth customer insight are resource demanding and rarely utilise available customer reports. In this study, we explore the widely used transactional Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a potential source of customer insight for service designers. Specifically, we explore the qualitative customer reports from transactional NPS. The study included the qualitative analysis of 1100 customer reports from a telecommunications service provider. We find that a proportion of customer reports clearly have potential as a source of customer insight, but that filtering is key. In particular, the detailed reports of low-scoring customers may provide the most valuable insight, as these can give a new perspective on the service process and a strengthened understanding of painpoints and potential improvements. We also discuss how the transactional NPS may be used more generally to assess the value and impact of service design.Using the Net Promoter Score to support service design: Digging for gold in customer free-text reportspublishedVersio

Segmentation and labelling of speech

During the last decades, significant research efforts have been aimed at devoloping speech technology products such as speech input and output systems. In order to train and evaluate these systems huge speech databases have been compiled in laboratories all over the world. However, neither the recording protocols nor the annotation conventions used have been standardised, making assessments of speech technology products across laboratories and languages difficult. The aim of this thesis work is to contribute towards a standardisation of segmentation and labelling of multi-lingual speech corpora. Segmentation is here defined as the process of dividing the speech pressure waveform into directly succeeding discrete parts. These segments are labelled with phoneme symbols. Continuous speech from five different languages; English, Danish, Swedish, Italien, and Norwegian, have been studied with respect to segmentation and labelling. Due to coarticulation effects, exact segmentation of speech as defined above is theoretically impossible, but the segmentation and labelling provides a link between the speech waveform and the phonological labels which is nevertheless essential for both speech research and for the development of speech technology. Thus, this thesis takes a pragmatic approach to the segmentation and labelling of speech and suggests methods to make the annotation process accurate and reliable enough for practical use