On the Futility of Innovating on Your Own: From Goods-Dominant Logic to Service(-Dominant) Logic in the Financial Services Industry
It is a kind of cliché to state that the financial services industry landscape is changing rapidly, continuously and often unexpectedly. Customers don’t seem to care about those incumbent financial services firms that are not responsive to their needs. Although there has been a constant stream of assurances from various banks, wealth managers, and insurance companies that they are customer-oriented and responsive to customer needs, a lot of things remain to be done. Customer-orientation hot talk, as I call it, is a form of self-deception, and although most of the financial services companies still heavily rely on old-dated goods-dominant logic, they talk as if the reality is something entirely different. The truth is that most financial services companies are again faking true customer-orientation and this is a real problem. This is very problematic as it deceives both the client as well as shareholders (or stakeholders). Signaling, shouting out loud random words, is simple but…
Why (chat)bots are so exciting?
In my earlier posts, I barely scratched the surface of chatbot revolution in customer service. There are ultimately various reasons why chatbots have become to dominate the discussion on the future of customer service, and why engaging the revolution of conversational user interfaces is so important. Customer service, per definition, requires one to assume a generalist role in the organizational matrix, i.e. it’s not just about receiving inputs and generating outputs based on logically construed rules but rather it requires one to be able to offer service (not a service). It’s no wonder that customer service roles are often perceived as stressful, and of course, different client-facing service positions require a different set of personal and organizational measures to prevent excess stress (Sidle 2004; St-Vincent, Denis, Imbeau & Trudeau 2006; Julian 2008). As a 2005 study published by British scientists points out, “Of the 26 occupations included in the research, … customer services…