The 2013 Annual Meeting of the

Service Management and Science Forum

A Joint Meeting of the Art & Science of Service, the Service Operations Management Forum of EurOMA and POMS College of Service Operations

August 4-6, 2013
Harrah’s, Las Vegas, NV

Theme: Customer Centricity

Meeting Announcement:

The Service Management and Science Forum is a truly transdisciplinary meeting involving academics and practitioners from all disciplines and organizations that focus on the service delivery process and the service systems that support it. Some of the academic disciplines that participate in this meeting include operations, marketing, information technology, design, and human resource management.
Advances in technology, especially information technology, have dramatically shifted the power in the marketplace from the providers to the customers. The causes for this shift in power are many, including (a) increasing customer knowledge and awareness, (b) growing emphasis on social networks like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube that allow customers to voice their satisfaction and, more importantly, dissatisfaction literally to the world, and (c) increasing ease of access that customers have to new suppliers of goods and services from the four corners of the globe.
As a result, companies and organizations are recognizing the importance of providing their customers with outstanding service by taking a customer-centric perspective. Such an effort requires an integrative approach that transcends the traditional functional areas. In addition, senior management must acknowledge that adopting a customer-centric philosophy for an organization doesn’t occur overnight, but rather requires commitment for a significant period of time before the benefits start to accrue. With the theme for the 2013 conference, service researchers and practitioners are invited to share innovations in customer-centricty and their implications for service value-creation.

For the 2013 conference, we seek submissions that include, but are not limited to, the following topics as they relate to customer-centricity:

Self-service technologies and other technology-enabled service innovations Customers and co-production: setting the service process task boundary Managing stakeholder relationships: customers, service providers, and the service supply chain Unlocking value co-creation in service design and delivery processes Applications of customer-centric service design in different industries and across countries

Tentative Keynote Speakers:

Patrick Jordan, COO Newton-Wellesley Hospital, Newton, MA

Doug Woodard, Vice President, Customer Service Operations, Card Capital One

Information for Contributors:

Individuals from academia, business and government are invited to submit refereed research papers, non-refereed research abstracts, and proposals for workshops, panels, and symposia. All submissions should have a clear customer-centric focus and are encouraged to be transdisciplinary in nature; that is, they should involve more than a single traditional discipline.

Submission Deadlines:

The submission deadline for refereed research papers is March 30, 2013. The submission deadline for non-refereed research abstracts and proposals is April 30, 2013.

For more information on the conference, contact:

Program Co-Chairs:

Gaby Odekerken
Maastricht University School of Business and Economics PO Box 616, 6200MD Maastricht The Netherlands
Email: g.odekerken@maastrichtuniversity.nl
TEL: +31 433883618

Joy Field
Boston College
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 USA
Email: fieldjo@bc.edu
TEL: 1-617-552-0442