The Spatiality of ongoing routinisation of services
The fast evolvement of digital technology has given rise to multi-channel services systems around us, and the increase of interaction channels are shaping the customer preference, and vice versa on the go. These complex service systems have standardized/routinized our interactions by taking advantage of technology. These standardized and routinized interactions also shape the way information is exchanged; knowledge and value are created at all touchpoints of the service.
The future we are looking into presently, the pace at which we are adopting technology presents challenges. The virtualization and reliability of digital technology are shaping our conversations; the trust is moving towards technology and may lose the main essence of care.
FRAMEWORK
To understand the spatiality of the multichannel service in the healthcare space. How the context, value creation, and routinization of services impacts the innovation cycle of the health services, a framework was developed and tested.
It aims to create an understanding around the potential drawbacks and problems of replacing the face-to-face interactions with the digital channels in the healthcare industry. Eventually, tries to answer the question, how the overall service experience changes in the space where the stakes are the most salient like health care industry?
DEFINITIONS
HYPOTHESIS
From the literature review, there were a set of inferences which helped analyze the framework further and develop a set of hypothesis to be tested in the field.
RESEARCH AND INSIGHTS
Research area
To understand the problem space and all the attributes of the framework the research was conducted at a fertility care clinic at Upenn. The clinic mostly focused on the two types of treatment IVF and IUI to help get women pregnant; It is a high-stress space, where most of the patients are either crying or carry- ing high anxiety about the future. The services were very sensitive to patients life, most of the patients came to the clinic already defeated that they can’t have a child through a natural process.
Interview and Analysis
The method used for analysis of interview dataset was grounded theory. The whole process led to the finding of patterns that can be defined further as guidelines for the framework. The interviews questions catered information on the stress, knowledge, and level of complexity of each phase of the clinic process. The measurement was analyzed based on the perceived increase and decrease on a scale of 1 to 7, with one as low and seven being the highest.
SOLUTION
The research and inference lead to the designing of framework guidelines and smoothing it further, as the framework helped understand the routinization of services, by studying the type of knowledge exchanged and created through a channel of interaction.
The context considered were on non-routinised to the routinized continuum. drove towards designing a framework. The guideline helps define how each service context can be considered as a non-routinised and routine, and how charting it with the type of interaction can help manage and co-create value to the best level.
CONCLUSION
Technology cannot replace the human element but can aid to enhance the value created via face-to-face interaction. The people will stop investing in a care service if it doesn’t satisfy their emotional needs and help them cope with the issues in all aspects emotional, educational, and decision making.
If we keep trying to standardize the services without accessing the value of face-to-face interaction, we may reach a declining point in the innovation cycle. A non-routinized situation provides the tacit aspect of information and utilizes experienced-based knowledge which adds to high-value co-creation in a complex situation. Hence, innovation of the services will decline.