Leveraging operant resources of consumers: improving customer experiences or productivity?

This article explores the application of Service-Dominant logic to the provision of services and the implications for the consumer experience of services. In particular this paper considers the potential for the principles of S-D logic to undermine the consumer experience of services. The particular context examined here is that of the rapidly growing provision of self-service. Service organisations that rely upon the operant resources of customers to co-produce, rather than co-create, the service are cautioned to consider the customer experience. When service organisations concentrate on the operant resources of their customers there is a danger that the focus will be on improving customer productivity, to gain a competitive advantage through reduced servicing costs, which may result in lowering the perceived quality of the consumer experience. There is a need to distinguish between the co-production, or task-performance aspects, and the value co-creation process, or value-attributing aspects of the consumer service experience.