Technovation 32 (2012) 133–143

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Technovation
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/technovation

Technology mediation in service delivery: A new typology and an agenda

for managers and academics
Jan H. Schumann a,n, Nancy V. Wünderlich b, Florian Wangenheim c
a
Department of Marketing, TUM School of Management, Technische Universität München, Arcisstr. 21, 80333 München, Germany
b
Department of Service Management, University of Paderborn, Warburger Str. 100, 33098 Paderborn, Germany
c
Department of Service and Technology Marketing, TUM School of Management, Technische Universität München, Arcisstr. 21, 80333 München, Germany

a r t i c l e i n f o abstract

Available online 3 December 2011 The role of information and communication technology for economic growth has been emphasized
Keywords: repeatedly. Technological breakthroughs have generated new forms of services, such as self-services or
Services remote services. Although these encounters are qualitatively different from traditional service
Remote services provision, prior service management literature thus far had paid little attention to theory development
Self-services and the systematization of technology-based service encounters. To fill this research gap, the present
Technology mediation study outlines how new types of technology-based services fit into existing service typologies and
provides an extension of existing frameworks to capture their unique characteristics. These insights in
turn offer managerial implications and highlight open research questions.
& 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction We define technology-mediated services, in line with Froehle

Sitting in a German hairdresser’s shop and getting a robotic
haircut from a professional Parisian hairdresser who remains in
Paris sounds like science fiction. But the idea of surgery in a
European hospital performed by a doctor located in the United
States might have been considered absurd just a decade ago. In
September 2001, this scenario became reality when the first
transatlantic surgery was performed. Three surgeons in New York
removed the gall bladder of a 68-year-old female patient in
Strasbourg, France, by controlling surgical robots through a data
line, with feedback through a videoconference system.
Modern information and communication technology (ICT)
thus has enabled the provision of traditionally local services over
long distances, as well as given rise to new forms of services (Keh
and Pang, 2010; Patricio et al., 2008). Many such services have
become part of our everyday lives. Using the Internet, we check
our bank accounts and make travel arrangements. We can check
in to flights via SMS on our way to the airport, and we interact
with students or teachers in online learning environments. With
continued rapid development in the field of modern ICT, more
and more services will be delivered via technology mediation.
As its basic premise, this paper asserts that these technology-
mediated services have unique characteristics with specific
implications for service management research and practice.
n
Corresponding author. Tel.: þ49 89 289 28415; fax: þ 49 89 289 28480.
E-mail addresses: jan.schumann@wi.tum.de (J.H. Schumann),
nancy.wuenderlich@wi.tum.de (N.V. Wünderlich),
florian.wangenheim@wi.tum.de (F. Wangenheim).
and Roth (2004), as services provided by a technological interface
between provider and customer, which allows for an immediate
exchange of information over long distances. This immediate
exchange of information is the key difference from services
traditionally provided over long distances, such as distance
learning or shipments of repaired parts. The immediate exchange
of an ever-increasing amount of information makes technology-
mediated services more and more multifunctional, allowing for
an adequate substitution of services, which formerly could be
provided only through direct contacts of the provider and custo-
mer and/or service object. Although some specific forms of
technology-mediated services, such as self-services, have received
substantial research attention (e.g., Bolton and Saxena-Iyer, 2009;
Curran and Meuter, 2005; Oliveira and von Hippel, 2011), a
comprehensive analysis of the various forms of technology-
mediated services and their implications for technology manage-
ment is still missing.
The present paper aims to fill this void and contributes to
research on technology-mediated services in at least three ways.
First, we discuss defining characteristics of technology-mediated
services, thereby extending the recurring debate on service
characteristics (Lovelock and Gummesson, 2004). We focus
exclusively on the effects of technology mediation in services
that were formerly provided through direct interactions between
customers and their providers (Kuusisto and Riepula, 2011).
Second, whereas previous authors discussed certain specific types
of technology-mediated services (e.g., Ferman et al., 2005; Lee
and Joshi, 2007; Meuter et al., 2000), we develop a comprehensive
typology of technology-mediated services and discuss their

0166-4972/$ - see front matter & 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

doi:10.1016/j.technovation.2011.10.002
134 J.H. Schumann et al. / Technovation 32 (2012) 133–143
defining characteristics according to the service-dominant logic
(SDL; Vargo and Lusch, 2004, 2008). In so doing, we focus
specifically on utilitarian services. Third, with our typology, we
note some managerial implications and, directly arising from
them, research questions still to be addressed.
2. Technology application in service delivery
2.1. New types of services
The importance of ICT as the driving force behind economic
growth in the service sector has been emphasized repeatedly (e.g.,
Rust, 2004). At the same time, the use of ICT has led to consider-
able changes in the service industry, which traditionally relied on
close personal contacts between customers and employees.
Hence, this technology infusion has altered the way services are
conceived, developed, and delivered (Meuter et al., 2000) and
thereby altered the nature of services themselves (Bitner et al.,
2000). A substantial number of new emerging services can be
classified as technology-driven self-services. We define technol-
ogy-mediated self-services, similar to Meuter et al. (2000), as
those services produced by customers for themselves, indepen-
dent of direct service employee involvement, using a technologi-
cal infrastructure that is provided by the service provider.
Self-services appear in a variety of industries, such as financial
services (online banking, ATMs), insurance (online consulting,
online contract management), tourism (online booking), and
telecommunications (online prepayment, change of service via
telephone), often in conjunction with e-commerce transactions.
Another service domain enabled by ICT is what we call
technology-mediated interactive consulting services. These
services allow for the provision of consulting services in a
technology-mediated interaction between provider and customer.
They include traditional telephone services, like hotlines and call
centers, but the variety of interactive consulting services and their
acceptance has grown exponentially with the spread and the
development of modern ICT. One example of interactive consult-
ing services is distance learning, which evolved from the devel-
opment and delivery of web-based courses (McComrick, 2000)
into comprehensive learning concepts in (mobile) virtual envir-
onments (Piccoli et al., 2001; Shen et al., 2009). Usually distance
learning entails an interactive consulting service, such that
teacher and students in virtual classrooms can directly interact
with one another, using different kinds of media such as video-
conferencing, chatting, or a shared monitor to support and
facilitate their cooperation. Thus in interactive consulting ser-
vices, multimedia communication reduces and compensates for
the disadvantages of physical distance. Other examples of newly
emerging interactive consulting services include remote consul-
tations via e-mail, video telephones in health care (Cegarra-
Navarro and Sánchez-Polo, 2010; Miller et al., 2003), and e-coach-
ing (Rossett and Marino, 2005).
In contrast with both technology-mediated self-services and
interactive consulting services, we define remote services as a
service type provided in a technology-mediated production pro-
cess, such that the provider can actively access the service object
over long distances (Wünderlich, 2009). Remote services already
apply in a variety of fields such as IT, engineering, and medicine.
Examples of remote services in the IT context include remote
control of IT systems and remote system administration. In
mechanical engineering, remote repair and remote maintenance
are common (Biehl et al., 2004; Wünderlich, 2009). For example,
in the remote repair of a high-volume printing machine, a US
service provider engineer remotely accesses a printing machine in
China to diagnose and solve a complex machine failure, then
repairs the machine despite the thousands of kilometers distance
(Wünderlich, 2009). Other examples are remote diagnosis, sur-
veillance, and surgery in health care (Allen, 2008; Chao et al.,
2007); remote updates of traffic signs in traffic control
(Rothenberg and King, 2004); and telematics, such as remote
repairs of car electronics in automotive industries (Chatterjee
et al., 2001; Lenfle and Midler, 2009).
It is important to note that though remote services cannot be
realized without an existing product or manufacturing system
(Geum et al., 2011), they also cannot be considered a function of
the product. For example, remote repair of a machine requires
technology embedded in products to facilitate the service, but the
repair is a separate economic activity that is offered by service
providers to earn more revenue. It is not an inherent function of
the machine but rather an independent service that merely uses
the focal technology and/or products.
From a service management perspective, it is fundamentally
interesting to understand whether, beyond the isolated consid-
eration of these single types of services, there are general
implications of technology use in services that are valid for all
types of technology-mediated services. In a next step, we present
a brief literature review, which illustrates the conceptual discus-
sion of technology applications in services.
2.2. Recent research on technology applications in services
Although various authors have researched technology-inten-
sive services, few of them discuss the overall consequences for
service management (e.g., Bitner et al., 2000; Bolton and Saxena-
Iyer, 2009; Domegan, 1996; Harvey et al., 1997; Lewis, 2002;
Quinn and Baily, 1994; Shugan, 2004). Even fewer authors have
systematically analyzed whether the application of certain tech-
nologies in service provision or delivery leads to distinct manage-
rial consequences (Keh and Pang, 2010; Kelley, 1989; Lovelock,
1995; Warren et al., 1989).
An initial classification scheme of services, based on the applica-
tion of technology in the service production process, was provided by
Dabholkar (1994). Her classification scheme is a phenomenological
description of different forms of technology use in service provision,
and it gives a good overview of different technology-based service
delivery options, such as customer-based versus provider-based
technology. A classification proposed by Froehle and Roth (2004)
identified conceptual archetypes of customer contact in relation to
technology applications, such as technology-supported face-to-face or
technology-mediated face-to-screen customer contacts.
Customer participation has been noted as a core characteristic
of services in SDL (Vargo and Lusch, 2004, 2008). According to
SDL, service customers co-create value-in-use, which leads to
customer-determined and co-created benefits. Customer co-crea-
tion can comprise shared inventiveness, co-design, or the shared
production of related goods (Hesmer et al., 2011; Lusch and
Vargo, 2006). Co-production is a special form of co-creation that
captures joint activities by the firm and the customer to produce
firm output (Vargo, 2008). Bolton and Saxena-Iyer (2009) classify
services based on the interactivity in services and the technology
level necessary to enable the service. They distinguish two types
of technology-enabled services by the degree of customer parti-
cipation, such as ‘‘highly interactive services’’ and ‘‘continuously
provided services.’’
However, none of these authors investigate whether the way
technology is applied for the actual co-creation process of a service
has distinct implications for service management. In the following,
we develop a typology of technology-mediated services, to provide a
comprehensive overview of the different types of technology use for
service delivery and their distinct characteristics. To gain an under-
standing of the underlying principles of technology-mediated
 J.H. Schumann et al. / Technovation 32 (2012) 133–143
services, we start by analyzing the key differences between face-to-
face and technology-mediated service encounters, using criteria that
usually characterize classical face-to-face service encounters.
2.3. Characteristics of classical services and technology-mediated
services
An attribute typically used to characterize classical face-to-face
service delivery is the requirement that the customer and provider
be co-located for the service provision process (Fitzsimmons and
Fitzsimmons, 2010; Lovelock and Wright, 2002; Shostack, 1977).
This attribute no longer holds for technology-mediated service
exchanges, because the technological mediation of services
abolishes the need for the co-location of customer and provider
and enables the provider to deliver services over long distances.
Furthermore, face-to-face services are typically characterized
as being customized and not storable (Fitzsimmons and
Fitzsimmons, 2010; Lovelock and Wright, 2002) and therefore
difficult to automate. Technology-mediated services do not gen-
erally share these attributes. Although remote services and online
consulting services typically are customized and difficult to
automate, self-services are based on automation, which requires
the standardization and storability of service delivery processes.
Yet whereas technology-mediated services as a whole share
elementary attributes that distinguish them from face-to-face
services, within the range of technology-mediated services, rather
fundamental differences exist, according to the way in which
technology is applied in the service production process. Technol-
ogy-mediated services are not a homogenous group, because
different technology applications have very distinct characteris-
tics. Therefore, the proposed typology characterizes different
types of technology-mediated services.
2.4. Typology of technology mediated services
Technology-mediated services can be differentiated funda-
mentally into self-services and delivered services, which encom-
pass the aforementioned remote services and interactive
consulting services. This differentiation relies on several charac-
teristics that describe the technology application and the custo-
mer participation type necessary for the service delivery.
Moreover, the distinctive characteristics have major implications
for service management theory and practice. Whereas customers
produce self-services by themselves, in delivered services, the
provider takes an active part in the service production process,
such as in a remote repair of a machine (see Table 1). With regard
Table 1
Differences between self-services and delivered services.
Self-services Delivered services
Active part in the service Customer Provider (or both)
production
Type of customer participation Customer Customer
co-production co-creation
Degree of customer/provider Low High
interactivity
Simultaneity of provider and No Yes
customer (or service object)
in the service production
obligatory
Possibility of automating Yes No
Storability Yes No
Degree of individualization Standardized Customized
Counterpart on the provider side Systems Persons
Complexity Low High
135
to SDL, different types of customer co-creation also are required
in these service categories.
Self-services require customers to actively participate in the
service process (Bitner et al., 2000; Nahius, 2009; Zhu et al.,
2007). These customers are even considered ‘‘partial employees’’
(Lovelock and Young, 1979; Mills and Morris, 1986), and the co-
creation of self-services represents customer co-production of
firm output. For example, in a withdrawal service at an ATM, a
customer uses facilities and pre-stored procedures provided by
the service provider. The customer and firm jointly collaborate
and deliver the service. In delivered services in contrast, the
customer co-creates the service but not by actively co-producing
the firm output. Instead, the customer benefits from the value-in-
use achieved by sharing information, such as in a consulting
context, or by providing the service object and access to the
object, as in the case of remote repair of a machine.
A further aspect that characterizes self-services is the fact that
frontline employees and customer do not need to be present
simultaneously in the service production process. Self-services
allow the service provider to offer the service 24/7, without
providing support by service representatives. An ATM can provide
the service of dispensing cash around the clock and only needs to
be checked and filled at certain periods of time. Delivered
services, such as phone-based consulting, instead usually demand
simultaneity of customer and representatives of the service
provider, because the service provider is actively involved in the
process of service production.
Technology-mediated self-services by definition also are auto-
mated, which incorporates both defining and implementing
service routines and therefore storing them in IT systems. A
consequence of the automation of self-services is the fact that
they are standardized and that the customer can exert very little
influence on the service production process. Because only well-
defined services that satisfy a broadly shared demand reasonably
can be automated (e.g., online bank transfers), their complexity
usually is rather low. In contrast, delivered services can be highly
individual and produced in an interactive, co-creative process
between customer and provider; therefore, for delivered services,
the attribute of storability does not apply. Delivered services can
be much more complex than self-services because they are
individually tailored solutions to each customer’s problems, such
as the implementation of an IT system.
Self-services and delivered services can be divided further into
different subtypes, as shown in Fig. 1. Within self-services,
according to Dabholkar (1994), a reasonable distinction differ-
entiates provider-based self-services and customer-based self-
services. The source of this distinction is the location where
customers access the self-service technology. In provider-based
self-services, the service provider provides the access technology
and sets up certain machines, such as ATMs or package pick-up
centers. In this case, customers must physically locate and
frequent the access technology. Provider-based self-services are
common for material service-objects, such as bank notes or
packages. Customer-based self-services instead can be accessed
through the customer’s own technological devices, such as PC or a
smartphone connected to the Internet. This characteristic implies
that only self-services can be provided without being tied to
specific service objects or locations, which limits their possible
fields of application. Within this reduced spectrum though,
customer-based self-services are much more flexible, because
they do not depend on the facilities and technology of the service
provider.
Delivered services also can be distinguished into remote
services and interactive consulting services (see Fig. 1). The most
fundamental difference between remote services and interactive
consulting services is that the former provide a direct access to
136 J.H. Schumann et al. / Technovation 32 (2012) 133–143
Fig. 1. Typology of technology-mediated services.
the service object. In long-distance surgery, the surgeon directly
operates on the patient, whereas a medical remote consultation,
an example of interactive consulting services, only offers verbal
advice. Another characteristic of remote services is that they
require the simultaneity of the customer (or customer’s object)
and the provider in the service production process. This is not
necessarily the case for interactive consulting services. If the
customer sends a request via e-mail for example, the processing
can occur independent of the customer’s simultaneous atten-
dance. Remote services furthermore differ from interactive con-
sulting services with regard to their complexity. Whereas remote
services, such as remote repair, are high in complexity, this
characteristic does not necessarily apply to interactive consulting
services. Interactive consulting services can be rather low in
complexity, such as an interactive vocabulary trainer, or encom-
pass higher complexity, such as remote consultations with a
physician.
In interactive consulting services, the access technology is
predominantly customer-based, such that the customer can gain
access to consultation services by phone or the Internet. Although
there are specific examples of provider-based interactive consult-
ing services, such as information systems in train stations or fixed
tourist information services, they are relatively rare. This rarity
can be explained in part by the great distribution of mobile ICT
among the potential customers. In addition, the main advantage
of these kinds of services is their significant availability, which
would be subverted if they were distributed only at fixed service
points.
Remote services comprise provider-based remote services and
customer-based remote services as well, depending on the loca-
tion of the applied remote service technology. Provider-based
remote services are used in cases that require a complex and/or
expensive infrastructure, which cannot be set up at the custo-
mer’s location but is available only at specific service sites, such as
a surgical robot system in a hospital. This characteristic implies a
reduction in flexibility and explains why these kinds of services
are and presumably will remain rather rare. A provider-based
remote service is reasonable only if the expertise of the provider
is so specific, important, and unique that there is sufficient
demand to make such an investment profitable. Currently, this
 J.H. Schumann et al. / Technovation 32 (2012) 133–143
scenario is rare, but it might emerge more often with the
development of cheaper technology solutions. Remote services
can be provided with much more flexibility if the technology
necessary for their provision is permanently located at the
customers’ locations, such as IT or remote services systems in a
machine that the provider can access from a distance.
Our analysis shows that technology-mediated services do not
represent one homogeneous type of service. What they have in
common though is that they can be transmitted over long
distances, which has major implications for service management.
Nevertheless, these implications do not follow a common logic for
all technology-mediated services; they have distinct differences
based on the way the technology is applied for service provision.
Therefore we have proposed a typology of technology-mediated
services that suggests some joint management implications for
each of the identified types of services. In the following, we
discuss how the characteristics of technology-mediated services
affect how service businesses interact with their customers, the
changing capabilities and resources required for generating a
competitive advantage, and the resulting challenges for managers
and academic researchers. Because of the discussed commonal-
ities and differences between technology-mediated services, as
well as within self-services, remote services, and interactive
consulting services, we focus especially on the implications of
those aspects that distinguish the single types of services from
one another.
In real life service settings, the types of services rarely occur as
archetypes; instead, they often appear in a combination with
other forms of service provision. In the context of banking for
example, customers can first make an online money transfer at
home, then go to the bank and pick up their account statement
from a self-service station, draw some money from the ATM, and
finally have a consultation with their bank advisor about their
investments. These single transactions in combination form the
service experience of the customer and evaluations of the service
provider. To design and configure these services, it is necessary to
analyze the implications of each of the proposed technology-
mediated services first. However, this isolated view might fall
short of understanding the perceived quality of an entire service
episode, and therefore, service quality measurement issues will
be picked up and discussed at the end of this article.
3. Managerial challenges and research directions
3.1. General challenges
Whereas the previously mentioned technology-mediated services
are diverse in nature, they share similarities, based on the common
denominator of technology mediation. On one hand, they share
similarities in terms of service providers’ motives for their applica-
tion. In most cases, the reason for technology applications in services
is cost reduction (Froehle and Roth, 2004). The market often imposes
this aim, because technology-enabled cost reductions of competitors
force firms to follow them (Xue et al., 2007). Another reason, just as
important and often even entirely independent of cost reductions, is
the advantages offered in flexibility and convenience (Fitzsimmons
and Fitzsimmons, 2010). In addition, the increase in availability can
be a reason for the application of technology-mediated services
(Boyer et al., 2002).
On the other hand, technology-mediated services differ from
face-to-face services due to the spatial separation between
provider and customer in the shared process of service provision.
The customer and service provider interact only through technol-
ogy mediation, which leads to a lack of personal contact. This loss
of personal interaction in the service delivery process reduces the
137
possibility of exchanging and developing social components such
as friendliness, empathy, and sympathy (Bos et al., 2002; Zheng
et al., 2002). Friendliness, empathy, and sympathy have been
shown to be important determinants for the development of trust
and value (Wilson et al., 2006) and ultimately customer loyalty
(Luarn and Lin, 2003) in e-service contexts. In addition, the lack of
personal interaction reduces the service providers’ potential for
cross- and up-selling due to limited information on current
customer needs.
Whereas these challenges apply to all technology-mediated
services, differences in the managerial challenges associated with
the distinct types of technology-mediated services have so far
been approached only to a limited extent. In the following, we
highlight the central challenges for managers related to the
different types of technology-mediated services and outline
avenues for future research (see Fig. 1).
3.2. Self-services
In many industries, such as finance and education, self-
services have become a common way of offering and providing
services. The traditional benefits of offering self-services are
increased long-term performance (Campbell and Frei, 2010;
Scaglione et al., 2009) and substantial labor cost savings asso-
ciated with the replacement of service employees by technology
(Selnes and Hansen, 2001; Xue et al., 2007). For many customers
though, the motive for using online banking for example is not
only lower costs but also the increase in flexibility and conve-
nience and the higher availability of these services (Collier and
Sherrell, 2010; Meuter et al., 2000). Their huge spread and success
therefore might result from the match between broad customer
acceptance and demand and their cost-saving potential for
service firms.
Despite their wide proliferation and acceptance in a lot of
industries, technology acceptance remains an issue for both
customers (Cheng et al., 2006) and employees (Konradt et al.,
2006). Although self-services are highly standardized service
processes, individual customer technology readiness (Lin and
Chang, 2011; Parasuraman, 2000) and technology anxiety
(Meuter et al., 2003) are core acceptance drivers (or barriers),
because customers play an active part in the production of self-
services. Further potential barriers to customer acceptance range
from a lack of faith in the capability of the technology (Colby and
Parasuraman, 2003) and lack of trust (Dimitriadis and Kyrezis,
2011), low perceived usefulness (Eriksson and Nilsson, 2007),
control beliefs (Collier and Sherrell, 2010; Oyedele and Simpson,
2007), and self-efficacy deficits (van Beuningen et al., 2009) to
perceived risk (Wang et al., 2006) to concerns regarding data
privacy issues (Ding et al., 2007). Also the consumers’ lack of role
clarity and role ability in using self-service facilities may drive
business away from service providers (Meuter et al., 2005).
Customers even develop negative attitudes toward a service
provider when forced to use technology-based self-services
(Reinders et al., 2008). As a first step to reduce these barriers,
the service provider should make self-service procedures as
transparent as possible and increase its customized control
characteristics (Yang et al., 2010). For the customer to feel capable
of conducting self-services and develop trust in the technology,
the provision of clear instructions, privacy, and security informa-
tion can only be a starting point. Improving the usability and
being in tune with the target groups’ actual needs are a further
integral requirement of attractive self-services (Ding et al., 2007;
Zviran et al., 2006). These requirements can be difficult, because
the design of the mediating technology often has to fulfill a
variety of functions, which can demand conflicting design deci-
sions. A common enterprise website, for example, must be easily
138 J.H. Schumann et al. / Technovation 32 (2012) 133–143
recognizable, provide corporate information, link to different
offices or branches, and display the corporate design. All of these
requirements have the potential to conflict with the aim of high
usability. In the case of an ATM, the configuration is not restricted
to the technology itself but can be extended to the service
environment, such as the design of the machine casing or the
room in which the machine is placed. Researchers must under-
stand in much more detail how self-services need to be designed
to motivate customers from different social and demographic
groups to use them. Whereas prior research indicates strong self-
selection mechanisms (Proenca and Rodrigues, 2011), service
providers depend strongly on a broad acceptance of their self-
services.
Finally, customers must be guided to the locations where self-
services are offered—be it virtual locations, like a website, or
physical locations, such as an ATM. Although intangible in nature,
self-service processes have search attributes comparable to
products. Thus, customers can observe other customers perform-
ing standardized tasks in self-services, which can help reduce
acceptance barriers, because customers are able to evaluate the
necessary steps and skills of a self-service process before usage.
Thus, consumer self-service search strategies may represent an
interesting, overlooked research topic.
This brief discussion of self-services highlights that we still
need to know how firms can communicate unique messages to
customers when they interact only via self-services, how they can
establish brand images through self-services, and whether the
potential downsides of self-services for customer contact reduce
cost advantages. Furthermore, we need to investigate what effect
the balance between usability and graphical design has on the
attractiveness of self-services for specific customer groups and
which strategies service providers should use to prepare their
customer base to switch to using self-services.
A successful application of self-services enables providers to
concentrate on individual aspects of complex service encounters,
as the main service load of highly standardized routines is
removed from service personnel. However, the loss of personal
interaction in the technology-mediated service delivery process
reduces the possibility of exchanging and developing social
components such as trust, value, empathy, and sympathy (Bos
et al., 2002; Zheng et al., 2002), as well as opportunities for cross-
and up-selling. Because the self-service process does not include
personal contact, service providers need to generate other occa-
sions to interact with their customers. Future research should
provide managers with an in-depth understanding of all aspects
of how self-services influence customer loyalty and purchase
behavior.
Thus far, research has focused primarily on consumer beliefs
and attitudes toward self-services (Curran and Meuter, 2005;
Dabholkar and Bagozzi, 2002). Although there is a growing body
of research ranging from factors that influence the intention to
use self-service technologies (Laukkanen et al., 2008; Walker
and Johnson, 2006) and service quality perceptions in self-
services (Ding et al., 2011; Lin and Hsieh, 2011) to service
recovery (Mattila et al., 2011), there is still much to be learnt
about customers’ perceptions of self-services. Regarding the
unique characteristics of self-services, more research is needed
on how customers interact with machines (instead of human
beings). In this context, it is of interest to investigate whether
there are additional attitudes and factors that influence the
perception of self-services, beyond those identified so far, and
how the significance of these factors changes over the course of
the relationship between customer and provider. In this context,
service providers also need to understand much better which
factors influence the customer decision to continuously use self-
services. First research findings indicate that external factors that
disrupt the adoption, such as holidays early in the usage process,
can disturb the continued usage (Lambrecht et al., 2011).
Furthermore, research is needed to understand whether shift-
ing customers from face-to-face to self-services actually implies
more difficulties for customer bonding and relationship building.
First research finding indicates that customers using a larger
proportion of self-services do defect less than customers using a
larger proportion of face-to-face services (Campbell and Frei,
2010) and that this can be explained by the higher switching
costs they perceive (Buell et al., 2010). Future research should
investigate whether this also holds true for pure self-service users
or whether a minimum of personal contacts is needed to achieve
this effect. In addition future research should investigate whether
self-services can be designed in a way that allows the customer to
experience cognitions and affects similar to the way human
interactions do.
3.3. Delivered services
3.3.1. Interactive consulting services
The decision of a service provider to use interactive consulting
services is often based on cost aspects. In interactive consulting
services though, cost savings can be realized in different ways.
One way is by offshoring interactive consulting services to low-
wage countries, such as call center services for a US company
outsourced to India. Another way to reduce costs is by increasing
the availability of services through technology mediation to
achieve better capacity utilization and broaden the target market.
With distance learning for example, MBA programs from top-
ranked business schools can be offered worldwide to a much
larger target group than classical, on-campus education. In addi-
tion to lower costs and higher availability, consumers choose
interactive consulting services because of their higher flexibility
and convenience, as exemplified by call centers (Akcay et al.,
2010; Bennington et al., 2000), distance learning (Piccoli et al.,
2001; Shen et al., 2009), or more exotic examples, such as avatar-
based open innovation processes (Kohler et al., 2009).
Whereas interactive consulting services go along with an
enormous increase in flexibility, the lack of direct contact with
the customer creates various challenges for service providers.
Customers cannot evaluate interactive consulting services by
search attributes, as is possible with standardized self-services.
Depending on the complexity of the technology system that
enables interactive consulting services, the customer’s individual
technology readiness should be considered (Parasuraman, 2000;
Park, 2009). For example, using distance-learning systems
requires a basic set of skills to navigate through menus on the
user interfaces. Because the service encounter might be especially
challenging for first-time users of these systems, it will be more
controllable for customers with increasing experience. Customer
evaluations of interactive consulting services therefore rely heav-
ily on experience qualities.
In addition, the high heterogeneity and customizability of
these services leads to the dominance of credence qualities in
the customer’s evaluation process (Zeithaml, 1981). For more
than 20 years, service research has highlighted the importance of
developing a relationship of mutual trust with the customer, in
particular when it comes to highly interactive services. The
development of trust, as already discussed, is hampered by the
reduction of personal contact, a key factor for developing trust in
interpersonal relationships (Bos et al., 2002; Zheng et al., 2002).
One way to reduce these disadvantages of technology-mediated
interaction is through the communication media design. There is
strong evidence that media richness (Froehle, 2006) has an effect
on the development of trust (Bos et al., 2002). Media richness is
defined by the diversity of the communication channels and the
 J.H. Schumann et al. / Technovation 32 (2012) 133–143
immediacy of the feedback (Brown et al., 2010; Kahai and Cooper,
2003); it leads to the increased social presence of a medium,
which also increases trust (Aljukhadar et al., 2010; Gefen and
Straub, 2004).
Those challenges are exacerbated in an international context. On
one hand, the use of interactive consulting services is especially
attractive for global service providers and their customers alike,
given the savings of travel costs and the greater flexibility in using
personnel resources (Bennington et al., 2000). On the other hand,
building trust and commitment across cultures is particularly
difficult (Grosse, 2002; Luo, 2002), especially in high-context
cultures, in which the context of a message often matters more
than its content (Usunier, 2000); communication and trust building
through technology mediation between the provider and customer
may be extremely challenging.
Beyond the application of rich media, there are still many
questions regarding the development of trust for providers of
interactive consulting services. Interesting areas of research in this
context are investigations on whether there is an appropriate media
design for a given service and whether there is an ideal commu-
nication design for different types of interactive consulting services.
In addition, we need to understand in much more detail how trust in
a service provider can be built in an intercultural context and the
major differences to take into consideration when providing inter-
active consulting services in different cultural contexts. Initial
empirical evidence suggests that consumers in different cultures
differ in the way they develop trust (Muethel and Hoegl, in press;
Schumann et al., 2010). Further research indicates that a social
network analysis approach might be particularly suitable for study-
ing the effect of communication and trust in global virtual teams
(Sarker et al., 2011).
Whereas the results regarding the development of trust con-
sistently reemphasize the importance of social cues for the devel-
opment of trust, findings about the influence of social factors on
customer satisfaction require some differentiation. Whereas there
is general agreement on social cues as drivers of e-learner
satisfaction, such as perceived interaction with others (Sun et al.,
2008), the relevance of social factors for customer satisfaction
seems to depend largely on the service type. Research on learner
satisfaction (Johnson et al., 2000) and human services (Bennington
et al., 2000) has shown that for identical outcomes, customer
satisfaction with face-to-face-services was significantly higher than
satisfaction with mediated services, such as distance learning and
call centers. Whereas Bennington et al.’s (2000) results indicate
that lower customer satisfaction with a call center service provider
is caused partly by impersonal contact and a lack of social signals, a
study of an Internet service provider (ISP) by Froehle (2006) does
not support this view. These contradictory findings might result
from differences in the service type and demands for different
communication styles. In education and human services, custo-
mers want to be personally addressed, so these services require a
more person-oriented communication, which results in higher
influences of the service provider’s social skills on customer
satisfaction. The technical support of an ISP only requires task-
oriented handling of the customers’ needs, so the social skills of a
service provider might be of minor importance in that customer
experience. Accordingly, the results from virtual team research
show that simple tasks can be solved better when the partners do
not meet in person but instead use technology-mediated commu-
nication (Hossain and Wigand, 2004).
When introducing new services, providers still confront the
challenge of taking the right measures and considering the
relevant factors for designing their specific service. Therefore,
more research is needed to better understand which factors
influence customer satisfaction in different interactive consulting
services and the role of the type of service task in this context.
139
A promising avenue for research is to investigate hybrid inter-
active consulting services, such as hybrid e-learning (Ahmed,
2010). We further need to know how the behavior of frontline
employees influences customer satisfaction in the context of
interactive consulting services and whether there are certain
competencies required for specific tasks. Finally, it is of great
academic and practical importance to investigate the different
competencies that are required when providing the service in a
cross-cultural context.
3.4. Remote services
Remote services, the most recent form of technology-mediated
services, are already established in the IT sector, but they are
becoming more and more common also in other sectors, such as
mechanical engineering or medicine (Kuusisto and Riepula, 2011).
Because they differ from mere interactive consulting services, in
that they allow for immediate access to the service object, remote
services enable service providers to offer their services anytime
and anywhere in the world where the appropriate technology is
available. Moreover, the service production process can be split
into various parts, performed at different locations. Strategies that
formerly could be applied only by producing companies, such as
global delivery and global sourcing, have become relevant stra-
tegies for service providers too. For example, IT service providers
can employ teams of globally distributed consultants to remotely
implement new IT systems at their clients’ facilities. Oil compa-
nies can use remote service teams to monitor offshore oil rigs.
Service personnel thus can be deployed much more effectively:
the amount of travel time is reduced, employees can work for
several customers at the same time, and expertise can be
selectively called in for specific tasks and applied more efficiently.
Furthermore, parts of the service production process can be
outsourced to offshore destinations, to benefit from low wages.
Remote services not only bring about possibilities for cost reduc-
tions, but also the increased flexibility enables smaller service
providers to realize projects that they could not have managed
with their personnel resources without remote services.
For customers, in addition to cost effects, the advantages of
remote services are primarily their high and rapid availability.
This benefit is particularly important because remote services
tend to be applied in central sectors, such as manufacturing or IT
systems, where downtimes can cause severe losses (Kinkel et al.,
2011). Firms whose production facilities are serviced by external
providers strongly depend on the 24/7 availability of the service
provider and very short machine downtimes. Remote services
provide the opportunity for immediate diagnosis and even for the
repair of the machine, which saves travel time to the production
site (Biehl et al., 2004; Wünderlich, 2009).
Unlike interactive consulting services and self-services, remote
service does not require high technology readiness by the indivi-
dual customer, because the co-creative part of the customer often
is minimal. Customers often only need to provide access to the
service object, such as in the case of a remote diagnosis of car
electronics (Lenfle and Midler, 2009). However, based on their
unobservable nature, remote services are also associated with
substantial challenges.
The possibilities of outsourcing and offshoring enable service
providers to use the most advanced or the cheapest solution
for every task involved in a project, but the coordination of
such remote services projects is difficult at best (Leem and Lee,
2004). As practitioners have stated, the increased need for
coordination within a virtual team, as well as with the customer,
and the documentation of the associated processes can lead
to a significant reduction in profitability. Cross-cultural differ-
ences exacerbate these problems in intercultural collaborations
140 J.H. Schumann et al. / Technovation 32 (2012) 133–143
(Kayworth and Leidner, 2001; Lin et al., 2008). Hence, the savings
associated with offshoring service provision to countries such as
India or China are often much lower than expected (Clark, 2004;
Mears, 2005). To account for the reduction in personal contacts,
service providers often reintroduce face-to-face meetings in their
project management (Rocco, 1998) or enable customers to visit
the production sites in offshore destinations to establish personal
contacts and facilitate trust development (Rajkumar and Mani,
2001). As one practitioner puts it, these measures are inevitably
necessary to bring the human touch back into remote services.
Although a growing body of literature on the management of
virtual teams exists (e.g., Hertel et al., 2005), even in an interna-
tional context (Kayworth and Leidner, 2001; Lin et al., 2008), most
research employs students in experimental settings that are far
less complex than the real settings in which such projects occur.
Even more important from a management perspective, we still
cannot answer questions about how customers react to such
project constructions and whether the determinants of internal
virtual team performance (e.g., Lin et al., 2008) are relevant from a
customer’s point of view or affect customer satisfaction.
In addition, customers might expect that the requested service
be provided in the firm’s country of origin (Jaffe and Nebenzahl,
2001). Or customers may want to benefit from their providers’
cost savings when they offshore services to cheaper locations. In
this context, further research should analyze how remote service
projects should be configured to account for these challenges. We
need to understand in much more detail the conditions in which
the activities of the value chain should be located at the firms’
home base and when they can be outsourced. We further need to
determine the optimal mix of home-based and offshore centers in
the service production process and how this complex process can
be coordinated. In addition, it is of interest to determine how the
interaction between virtual service teams and customers can
be coordinated and how customer satisfaction is influenced by
internal virtual team performance. Finally, research must find
answers to the questions of how trust and commitment can be
developed in remote customer relationships and whether there
are critical time periods during projects that require face-to-face
interactions with the customer (e.g., beginning of the project).
With regard to cultural differences, it is of interest to discern
whether high-context cultures require more face-to-face interac-
tion and whether some cultures might be less dependent on
personal contact, such that the entire relationship could be
managed remotely.
In addition to the challenging customer characteristics and
expectations that go along with the internationalization process,
professional service firms offering remote services must manage
their partnerships in one or more foreign countries (e.g., Dhar and
Balakrishnan, 2006; Levina and Su, 2008). Service providers that
outsource their remote services to local firms in countries such as
China or India face potential lock-in or hijack problems when their
asset-specific investment is so huge that headquarters cannot cut off
relationships with partners without a giant loss or replacement
investment (e.g., Bahli and Rivard, 2005; Nakatsu and Iacovou,
2009). Particularly, if the capable outsourcing partner, such as an
Indian software design team or medical team, grows enough to
become a new competitor or is acquired by a competitor, the service
firm will be confronted with a crisis far more severe than rising
labor costs in its own country. Thus, for professional service firms,
multinational remote services are a difficult endeavor. Research
questions that go along with these challenges include the following:
how should partnerships be designed to minimize the risks for
remote service providers? Which aspects of the remote service can
and should be outsourced, and which should remain in the firm’s
own hands? What legal measures can be taken to reduce the risks of
such partnerships?
Furthermore, when customers cannot see their providers
working on a project, they have a hard time evaluating the time,
effort, and quality of the work, because they lack a sufficient
evidence of service (Zeithaml et al., 2006). Remote service
providers need to make the service provision process and its
quality transparent to customers. As a consequence of the
reduced observability of remote services, customers rely more
on credence qualities to evaluate remote services (Zeithaml,
1981). Therefore, providers of remote services must manage the
virtual servicescape carefully, for example the use of aesthetic
design as an element of new service development is likely to
improve the provider’s performance (Candi and Saemundsson,
2011; Verganti, 2011). Research is needed to help remote service
providers find answers to questions such as, How can we increase
the acceptance of remote service interactions, especially in an
international context? Which evidence and signals should we
send to customers to demonstrate the quality and the amount of
work on the project when we never meet in person?
It is important that service providers assess the demands of their
customers regularly (Ettlie and Rosenthal, 2011). Various scales for
different aspects, such as self-service quality (Parasuraman et al.,
2005; Zeithaml et al., 2000), satisfaction (Bauer et al., 2006; Meuter
et al., 2000; Weijters et al., 2007), usability (Hornbaek, 2006), and
usage intentions (Curran and Meuter, 2005; Falk et al., 2007) have
been developed. For interactive consulting services, specific scales
have been developed to measure, for example, service quality in call
centers (Dean, 2004; Feinberg et al., 2000) or satisfaction with
distance learning (Wang, 2003; Wang et al., 2007). What is still
missing are scales that deal with the specific demands of remote
services, such as satisfaction with the transparency and controll-
ability of the service production process, the interaction with the
service provider, or remote relationship quality.
4. Conclusion
Substantial differences exist between technology-mediated
and classical services. Furthermore, as we show herein, technol-
ogy-mediated services do not form homogeneous groups of
services. Instead, many characteristics of technology-mediated
services differentiate the various subtypes. This paper offers a
typology, an extensive discussion of distinct characteristics, and a
list of managerial and research implications for these under-
researched service types. From a managerial standpoint, the
design and configuration of self-services should emphasize the
perceived self-efficacy of the customer and strive for both
usability and ease of use in the interface technology. The provi-
sion of interactive consulting services instead demands trust and
perceived social presence in an interactive environment, whereas
the design of remote services should focus on the perceived
transparency of the service processes for the customer.
In this article, we have examined the different types of service
provision independently, yet they often occur in a sequence and
form a complete service experience. This situation leads to
research questions about how technology-mediated services
shape overall customer perceptions and whether the offering of
one technology-mediated service influences the perception of
other face-to-face services or technology-mediated services.
Another limitation pertains to our focus on the use of tech-
nologies in the delivery of utilitarian services, which mostly offer
functional value to customers. This focus ignores hedonic ser-
vices, such as jukeboxes, fruit machines, karaoke, online games,
online casinos, virtual matchmaking, and Second Life (Hemp,
2006). The distinction between utilitarian and hedonic technol-
ogy-mediated services offers interesting and promising directions
for further research. Researchers might address potential differences
 J.H. Schumann et al. / Technovation 32 (2012) 133–143
in the acceptance and perceptions of hedonic experiences com-
pared with utilitarian experiences. Hedonic technology-mediated
services seem almost exclusively self-services. How can this trend
be explained? What stops, for example, music acts from offering
live streaming of their concerts for a fee? Why do not more life
tutoring offers exist on the Web? In summary, most implications
and research questions originate from the fact that the co-
location of provider and customer becomes less and less neces-
sary as ICT advances, so knowledge about new scenarios for
customer–provider interactions and their business implications
will continue to be of great practical and academic significance.
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