Ryan W. Buell

Conventional wisdom holds that the more contact an operation has with its customers, the less efficiently it will run. But when customers are partitioned away from the operation, they are less likely to fully understand and appreciate the work going on behind the scenes, causing them to value the product or service less. What’s more, employees, separated from the people they’re helping, are less likely to perceive their work as meaningful and appreciated. Operational transparency – the deliberate design of windows into and out of the operation - can improve experiences and performance. 

• HBR: Operational Transparency: Make Your Processes Visible To Customers, and Your Customers Visible To Employees
• Research: The Labor Illusion: How Operational Transparency Increases Perceived Value
• Research: Creating Reciprocal Value with Operational Transparency
• Research: Surfacing the Submerged State: Operational Transparency Increases Trust in and Engagement with Government
• Research: How Transparency into Internal and External Responsibility Initiatives Influences Consumer Choice
• Research: Lifting the Veil: The Benefits of Cost Transparency

In manufacturing operations, inputs to the production process are selected with compatibility in mind. However, this is not the case in most service operations, where customers provide inputs to the production process and are often bereft of the information they need to best decide whether and how to engage. As a consequence, companies often attract customers whose needs and preferences diverge from their operating capabilities.  Some of my research documents the magnitude and drivers of this challenge and demonstrates how providing customers with transparency into otherwise-hidden tradeoffs in the design of service offerings can help them make more well-informed choices that enhance the profitability and longevity of service relationships. 

• Working Knowledge: The Upside of Highlighting a Product's Downsides
• Research: The Customer May Not Always Be Right: Customer Compatibility and Service Performance
• Research: How Do Customers Respond to Increased Service Quality Competition?
• Research: Improving Customer Compatibility with Operational Transparency
• Research: Experimental Evidence of Pooling Outcomes Under Information Asymmetry

Against a backdrop of intensifying competition, rising labor costs, and ascending customer expectations, companies are actively seeking ways to do more with less – for example, compelling customers to take on new roles in the value creation process. And, when companies do provide human service, customers often spend a significant amount of time waiting for it. Some of my recent research has considered these developments as an opportunity for operational innovation, exploring how providing transparency into different facets of the operation might be used to diminish the pain of waiting for service, bolster customer confidence in self-service environments, and across contexts, increase customer persistence in service interactions.

• HBR: The Parts of Customer Service that Should Never be Automated
• HBR: Why Anxious Customers Prefer Human Service
• Research: Are Self-Service Customers Satisfied or Stuck?
• Research: Mitigating the Negative Effects of Customer Anxiety Through Access to Human Contact
• Working Knowledge: Customers at the Back of the Line are Anxious 
• Research: Last Place Aversion in Queues
• Research: Last Place Aversion: Evidence and Redistributive Implications

This course enables students to develop the skills and concepts needed to ensure the ongoing contribution of a firm's operations to its competitive position. It helps them to understand the complex processes underlying the development and manufacture of products as well as the creation and delivery of services.

World-class service organizations deeply understand the needs and behaviors of their customers, and design, manage, and improve their operating models accordingly. This course investigates the distinct challenges inherent in leading service operations, which make up more than 63% of the global economy. In this course, students learn how to design distinctive and sustainable service strategies, how to manage customers and employees, how to develop a cohesive service culture, how to fund service excellence, how to leverage big data to enhance performance, and how to reshape their organizations to suit evolving consumer needs and changing competitive landscapes. The course draws upon cutting edge research and examples from a broad array of industries, including business services, entertainment, financial services, food services, government, healthcare, hospitality, retail, and transportation.