Servitization and customer experience

Services are no longer a supporting act in the global economy—they are the primary source of value creation, differentiation, and growth. With digital technologies blurring the line between products and services, companies across industries are rethinking how they create customer value. This course provides students with advanced knowledge of service innovation and customer experience management, preparing them to navigate the opportunities and challenges of today’s service-driven business landscape. With its focus on service, this course provides a much-needed addition to the many product-focused and manufacturing-centric engineering courses.

A central theme of the course is the ongoing transformation of manufacturing firms into solution providers, a process known as servitization. You will explore the business models that underpin this shift and the organizational challenges companies face when implementing them. Using practical tools such as the Gaps model and service blueprinting, you will analyze and design service processes, discovering how effective service delivery relies on close coordination between marketing, operations, IT, and human resources.

Another key theme is understanding how customers perceive and evaluate service quality—and how this shapes satisfaction and loyalty. The course examines the roles of frontline employees and emerging technologies (e.g., self-service systems, AI-powered service agents, and robots) in shaping the customer experience. You will also learn how to design service systems that balance operational performance (e.g., speed and quality), innovation, and customer satisfaction. This includes analyzing real-life service data with advanced statistical techniques to engineer optimal service strategies—for example, by aligning employee capabilities with specific markets, roles, or customer segments.

The aims of the course are:

The course objective is to introduce students to the concept of servitization, the importance of creating unique customer experiences, and the challenges related to service innovation management.

Learning objectives:

• To (re)design service processes, using Service Blueprinting.
• To design effective service recovery strategies.
• To model and design servitized sustainable business models.
• To identify the required organisational capabilities for servitized business models to facilitate the coordination of different information, financial resources, and material flows.
• How to utilize frontline employees and customers for innovation purposes, i.e., as a resource to improve services in the short- and long-run.
• To systematically analyze, understand, and (re)design a service system to balance operational performance, innovation, and customer experience.
• To integrate technology in service delivery (e.g., self-service, service robots, artificial intelligence), both from an employee and a customer point-of-view.

You must meet one of the following collections of requirements

• Collection 1
• Completed Final examination Bsc program
• Collection 2
• Completed Pre-Master

• Selection of academic articles Part is recommended, Part is mandatory