Faculty and Research

Managing Service Operations Course Development

Managing Service Operations is an Elective Curriculum course taught at HBS. Over thirty cases and exercises have been created for the course. For a list of the cases developed for this course, please see the Publications link below.  For the most recent syllabus, click here: MSO Syllabus.

Managing the Operating Role of Customers

Customers in operating roles introduce considerable variability into the production environment including differences in the demands they impose on the environment and the unpredictability of those demands. When customers are the source of production variability, the service experience can rely heavily on accommodating that variability. However, operational efficiency typically demands reducing variability. This research explores the challenge of managing the tradeoff between operational efficiency and service value, providing prescriptions for how to mitigate its effects through influencing customer behavior. See HBS 606-032 for a detailed discussion of managing the operating role of customers.

Service Excellence by Design

This research addresses how to design sustainable service models that deliver ongoing value to both customers and the firm. In particular, the research reveals three principles of effective service management (see HBS 606-031 for a detailed discussion of these design principles):

• Ground the service offering in specific service attributes.
• Build an explicit mechanism for funding the service offering.
• Set employees up to reasonably deliver the service offering’s value.

Managing Customer Information

After a service offering is implemented, firms routinely collect significant amounts of data, including customer, employee, and firm financial data. However, service firms are not nearly as effective as they could be in taking advantage of these data. This research argues that a major shift in mindset is required before many organizations can effectively generate actionable insights from readily available data. See HBS 606-097 for a framework for approaching service management problems that can be informed by data analysis.

How to Manage Customers for Increased Profits and Customer Satisfaction

For many service firms, the customer plays an important role in contributing to the cost and/or quality of the service. This is very different than many manufacturing contexts, for example, where the firm has virtually complete control over product cost and quality. In these instances, firms need to design and manage customer involvement explicitly. By cultivating the appropriate environment, firms can harness customer efforts to the advantage of both the firm and customer. By not carefully managing this, however, firms can experience escalating costs in the face of eroding satisfaction.