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This paper aims to determine the importance of the human touch in customer service interactions.

The paper is based on two original studies using tech‐savvy respondents, utilizing a survey and scenario‐based research.

The paper finds that, even for tech‐savvy customers, human touch is an important factor in both customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions.

The study is limited to US respondents and telephone‐based service encounters.

This paper shows the importance of keeping some aspects of the human touch in customer encounters with the firm. Firms cannot rely on self‐service technology for all services.

This paper fulfills a gap in the existing services literature, with a specific focus on valuing human interaction in technology‐enabled service encounters.

Purpose: The purpose of this chapter is to review and critically evaluate robots, artificial intelligence and service automation (RAISA) applications in the restaurant industry to educate professors, graduate students, and industry professionals.

Design/methodology/approach: This chapter is a survey of applications of RAISA in restaurants. The chapter is based on the review of professional and peer-reviewed academic literature, and the industry insight section was prepared based on a 50-minute interview with Mr. Juan Higueros, Chief Operations Officer of Bear Robotics.

Findings: Various case studies presented in this chapter illustrate numerous possibilities for automation: from automating a specific function to complete automation of the front of the house (e.g., Eatsa) or back of the house (e.g., Spyce robotic kitchen). The restaurant industry has already adopted chatbots; voice-activated and biometric technologies; robots as hosts, food runners, chefs, and bartenders; tableside ordering; conveyors; and robotic food delivery.

Practical implications: The chapter presents professors and students with a detailed overview of RAISA in the restaurant industry that will be useful for educational and research purposes. Restaurant owners and managers may also benefit from reading this chapter as they will learn about the current state of technology and opportunities for RAISA implementation.

Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this chapter presents the first systematic and in-depth review of RAISA technologies in the restaurant industry.

Automation poses to change how service work is organized. However, there is a lack of understanding of how automation influences specific sectors, including specific hospitality jobs. Addressing this gap, this paper looks at the relative automatability of jobs and tasks which fall within one specific hospitality context: frontline food service.

Study 1 analyzes the UK Office for National Statistics' Standard Occupational Classification (2020) data to determine the degree to which frontline food service jobs consist of tasks requiring mechanical, analytical, intuitive or empathetic intelligence. Study 2 contrasts these findings to current state of intelligent automation technology development through interviews and a focus group with food service technology experts (n = 13).

Of all the tasks listed under food service in the ONS SOC 2020, 58.8% are found to require mechanical, 26.8% analytical, 11.3% intuitive and 3.1% empathetic intelligence. Further, the automatability of these tasks is found to be driven by three streams of technology development in particular: (1) autonomous navigation, (2) object manipulation and (3) natural language processing.

Hospitality management literature has started to conceptualize a move from mechanical and analytical service tasks to tasks centered around intuition and empathy. While previous studies have adopted a general view to what this might mean for hospitality jobs, this paper develops a novel, task-centric framework for Actioning Intelligent Automation in Frontline Food Service.

The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the important question of what is wrong with interactive voice response (IVR) system service by expanding a spatially informed conceptualisation of virtual navigation which recognises the experience of movement within and through space.

First, previous research on IVR systems is reviewed to highlight key themes to a service audience. Second, the metaphorical aspects of language used by the popular and trade press to describe IVR systems is examined. Usability and design issues are identified from previous research as a basis from reinterpreting them from a spatial perspective of navigation.

Both figurative and conceptual spatial metaphors are used to describe the IVR system as an enclosed physical space, within which customers enter, feel stuck, get lost, or try to escape from. The usability issues of human memory, linearity, and feedback, can be reinterpreted from a spatial perspective as a basis for explaining confusion and frustration with IVR systems.

Since the paper is conceptual, further research is needed to empirically investigate different types and features of IVR systems. The possible influence of age and culture upon the spatial nature of experience is especially interesting topics for future study.

The paper identifies the absence of space as an inherent limitation of IVR systems. It subsequently recommends that firms should provide spatial resources to support customer use of IVR systems, which is supported by the recent emergence of visual IVR.

The paper introduces the broader literature on IVR systems to the service field as a basis for raising awareness about this ubiquitous technological component of telephone-based service delivery. It applies and develops a highly abstract conceptual perspective to examine and interpret the representation and experience of IVR systems, as a basis for explaining the confusion, frustration, and dislike of them.

The instalment of customer friendly technology (such as menu driven automated teller machines, telephone and Internet banking services) as a means of delivering traditional banking services has become commonplace in recent years as a way of maintaining customer loyalty and increasing market share. Traditional brick and mortar banks are using technology to meet the competitive challenge posed by online banks, as well as a method of reducing the cost of providing services that were once delivered exclusively by bank personnel. The present research investigates some of the various roles technology plays in the US banking sector and how technology in general impacts the delivery of banking service. The authors developed a grid that might prove useful to bank managers when making decisions concerning the priority of implementation of service‐oriented technology. Key strategic implications are discussed to include ways banks can improve the level of technology‐based service they provide to their customers.

This paper examines the accessibility and retrieval of electronic information in the Nigerian University of Agriculture Library. A three‐part questionnaire was given to 1,000 out of an estimated 5,030 users of electronic information in the university library using a simple random sampling technique from whom 789 responses were returned and found usable. This constituted a 78.9 per cent response. The study revealed that non‐final year undergraduates use mainly the automated library catalogue (OPAC) while final year and postgraduate students as well as academic staff regularly use bibliographic databases tools such as TEEAL and CAB abstracts. A majority of users were satisfied with the information obtained and reported that they find these automated services to a greater or lesser extent easy to use. The major constraints to information accessibility and retrieval of automated library services were infrastructural: the limited number of terminals available for use and power supply outages.

There are two objectives of this paper: first, to examine the application of lean production improvement techniques to the pure‐service context; and, second, to evaluate the contribution of lean production techniques to services marketing improvement.

Three case companies from the UK financial services sector are tracked through the process of lean improvement. Analysis of management change of a common process within each company forms the basis of the investigation.

Research findings highlight that, through the adoption of lean service tools, service call centres can serve the traditionally competing priorities both of operational cost reduction and of increased customer service quality. The lean approach is validated in the service context and proposed as a valuable addition to traditional service marketing approaches to services improvement.

The techniques described are easily replicable by academics, practitioners and managers and can be applied to a wide range of service centres or service businesses. In the contemporary marketplace, the difficulty of delivering quality service at any costs suggests that there is a great opportunity for the business that can deliver better service at a reduced cost of operation.

Lean transformation in the manufacturing sector is well established. However, the use of lean improvement tools to improve the quality of service delivery within the service sector is relatively new, with limited understanding of approaches and benefits in the academic or managerial arenas. In addition, coverage of lean tools is still rare in the marketing literature.

The paper seeks to propose a method for selecting menu items based on an analysis of user‐entered search terms. Menu pages inform users what is coming next and what questions are going to be answered by an information communication technology service. Menus need to reflect user needs. The paper aims to argue that users reveal the scope of their information needs by the words used in their search expressions and these can be analysed to inform menu titles.

The paper presents an analysis and classification of user search expressions that are automatically collected by the server. The paper examines the search expressions of about 1,000 users of the BBC site related to search expressions on diabetes.

The search expressions were classified, analysed and compared with the diabetes menu of three health sites: NHS Direct (www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk); BBC health (www.bbc.co.uk); and Diabetics UK (www.diabetes.org.uk). Finally, a six‐point menu is derived.

The practical implication of this paper is development of relevant web menus based on user information needs as revealed in search expressions entered by users.

This is the first explanation of how search logs can be used to construct menu lists. Previously menus have been designed at worst to suit producers and site designers based on the information that they have available and at best on interviews with small usability or focus groups who are not necessarily users.