مهارت های ارتباطی که از ایجاد ارزش پشتیبانی می کنند: مطالعه تعاملات B2B بین مشتریان و نمایندگان خدمات مشتری

Although interaction has been acknowledged as central in value creation there is still a lack of empirical studies on how value creation is accomplished in practice, and in particular how communicative skills support customers' value creation. The purpose of this paper is therefore to generate a deeper understanding of how customer service representatives' communicative skills in conversations with customers support customers' value creation. We argue that value creating processes correspond to customers' roles as “feelers”, “thinkers” and “doers”. Accordingly, value creation involves three interdependent elements, an emotional, a cognitive and a behavioral. Based on a qualitative research design, drawing on an empirical study of 80 telephone conversations between customers and customer service representatives in a business-to-business context, the paper demonstrates three communicative skills that are essential in supporting customers' value creation: attentiveness, perceptiveness and responsiveness. The findings show how employees, by means of these communicative skills support customers' value creation. Attentiveness supports cognitive elements of the customers' value creating processes, whereas perceptiveness supports value creation in terms of cognitive, behavioral and emotional aspects. Finally, responsiveness supports the customer's cognitive as well as behavioral value creation.

Value creation has emerged as a central notion in contemporary service research (e.g. Edvardsson et al., 2005, Normann, 2001, Normann and Ramirez, 1993, Ravald and Grönroos, 1996 and Wikström, 1996) and as an important new way of portraying service: “service is a perspective on value creation rather than a category of market; the focus is on value through the lens of the customer; and co-creation of value with customers is key” (Edvardsson et al., 2005: 118). This service-centered perspective on value creation emphasizes interaction between customer and firm as central to creating value ( Grönroos, 2011). It is through interactions that value is created, seeing that information is exchanged, consumed (i.e. existing information utilized) and produced (i.e. new information created) as well as knowledge is generated, and services are co-designed and co-created ( Berthon & John, 2006). As Grönroos (2008) claims, a service provider has an opportunity, through customer interaction, to actively influence the flow and outcome of the consumption process (value creation) while the customers have the opportunity to influence the activities of the service provider. This interaction view ( Echeverri & Skålén, 2011) stands in contrast to and challenges the non-interactive perspective where value is seen as being embedded in the products and services provided by selling firm. Value is according to the service-centered perspective fundamentally derived and determined in customers' use (value-in-use) ( Vargo and Lusch, 2004a, Vargo and Lusch, 2004b and Vargo et al., 2008). Several researchers argue that customers create value independently, but with the support of the supplier ( Payne et al., 2007 and Storbacka and Lehtinen, 2001). For this reason, and in line with Grönroos (2008), we use the term value creation when referring to the customers' role, and the term value co-creation when referring to the suppliers' role. That is, customers create value for themselves in their everyday practices and the firm develops opportunities to co-create value with and for the customers in their interactive contacts with them ( Grönroos, 2008: 299). Interaction can in this perspective be seen as a “generator of service experience and value-in-use” ( Ballantyne & Varey, 2006a: 336). However, although the notion of interaction has been acknowledged in the literature, there is surprisingly few empirical studies on how value creation is accomplished in practice (Echeverri and Skålén, 2011 and Vargo et al., 2008), and in particular how communicative interaction supports value creation. As Lindgreen and Wynstra (2005) state there have been relatively few attempts to, in great detail, investigate ongoing interaction processes between buyers and sellers. Most research on value creation with an interaction view is conceptual (e.g. Vargo and Lusch, 2004a and Vargo and Lusch, 2004b) or draw on anecdotal data (e.g. Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004). Several researcher call for more closely observations of everyday interactions between providers and customers ( Echeverri and Skålén, 2011 and Woodruff and Flint, 2006). This enables a greater understanding of customers' everyday practices and value-generating processes and also creates opportunities for the supplier to engage itself with its customers' value-generating processes and thus become a co-creator of value with its customers ( Grönroos, 2008). In this paper we focus on interactive processes that support customers' value creation in their everyday practices (cf. Grönroos, 2008). The purpose of this paper is to generate a deeper understanding of how customer service representatives' (CSRs) communicative skills in conversations with customers support customers' value creation. How do the communicative skills serve as a foundation for customers' value creation? The concept of value is used in accordance with thoughts within the service-dominant (SD) logic, as will be evident below. The study is based on everyday interactions in the form of telephone conversations between CSRs in an industrial company and their customers. Such conversations between customers and CSRs are but one form of action in the overall interaction process between the buying and selling firm (see Holmlund, 2004 for an outline of different interaction levels in a relationship). Interaction between a buying and selling firm can also entail certain amounts of self-service, e.g. when a customer places an order or searches information through a system provided by the selling firm. However, we choose to exclude such interactions and focus on communication where two people are involved, i.e. a customer and a CSR. Frontline staffs play a strategic role in value creating activities (Wikström, 1996), since they are often the primary point of contact before, during and, after a purchase (Chung-Herrera, Goldschmidt, & Hoffman, 2004). They are also of importance in developing customers' trust (Darian, Wiman, & Tucci, 2005), increasing their service encounter satisfaction (Bitner, Booms, & Tetreault, 1990), and providing service recovery when failures occur (Bell and Luddington, 2006 and Maxham and Netemeyer, 2003). The human interaction element is thus essential when determining whether or not service delivery is to be deemed satisfactory (Chebat & Kollias, 2000). Corresponding to Day and Crask (2000) we acknowledge that the concept of value is separated from customer satisfaction, although they are related seeing that satisfaction is a reaction to perceived value. Furthermore, satisfaction can only be assessed after consumption, while value is possible to evaluate before, during and after consumption. At first in the paper we discuss previous research on value and communicative interaction. This is followed by a section covering a theoretical framework on conversation and value creation. Subsequently, we describe the research design. Our findings in Section 5 are divided into three subsections that relate to different categories of communicative skills, that is, attentiveness, perceptiveness and responsiveness. We argue that these communicative skills are supporting emotional–cognitive and behavioral elements of the customer's value creation. Then the wider implications of our results are discussed and concluded. In the last two sections we account for the study's managerial implications, discuss limitations and make suggestions for future research in this area.

The purpose of this paper was to generate a deeper understanding of how customer service representatives' communicative skills in conversations with customers support customers' value creation. Drawing on an empirical study of naturally-occurring conversations between CSRs and customers, the paper contributes to research on value creation in business markets. Our study demonstrates three communicative skills that are essential in supporting customers' value creation: attentiveness, perceptiveness and responsiveness. First, a CSR demonstrates attentiveness towards the customer through different verbal and non-verbal cues during the interaction. These cues are important in order for customers to understand that their needs are attended to in an appropriate way. The cues also facilitate cognitive elements in the customers' value creating processes. Second, the CSR's perceptiveness is reflected through the attempts of understanding the customer's message. The frequent use of questions, feedback and explanations are examples of means to pinpoint customers' needs and thereby offer the appropriate product or service to meet those needs. In addition it supports value creation in terms of cognitive, behavioral and emotional aspects, as the customer gains access to knowledge, learns how to act and is emotionally acknowledged. Third, the CSR's responsiveness reflects the level of understanding or agreement towards the customer. Restatements, clarifications and interpretations are ways to make sure that the message is understood, which in turn supports the customer's cognitive as well as behavioral value creation. We argue that this micro analysis of conversations clarifies how employees' ability to, in dialog with the customers, clarify, create and demonstrate an understanding about customers' needs, enable customers to adapt organizational resources to their own usage situation. Following Vargo and Lusch (2004ab), value-in-use is achieved through the integration of resources. Value-in-use, in our case, is enabled when a customer actually receives the proper information, is able to place an order, make a change, or gets a problem solved, i.e. the specific form of “value-in-use” is related and dependent on the customer's interactional goal and the employee's skills. Even if value-in-use has dissimilar features, it is evident that the communicative processes and the resource integration have certain common denominators. Employees confirming and attending to customers' requests allow the customers to continue the communication and, hence, in the end create value-in-use. Similarly, employees' communicative work of investigating and explaining, using techniques of perceptiveness, supports this creation. Our paper also demonstrates how employees' responsiveness makes it possible to reach mutual understanding and agreement which in turn is a vital aspect of value creation. In this respect, the employees' communicative behavior and above all, skills, are a mean towards the end to support customers' value creating process.