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A small group of pioneering founders led the creation and early evolution of the service research field. Decades later, this article shares timeless service wisdom from ten of those pioneering founders.

Bowen and Fisk specified three criteria by which to identify a pioneering founder. In total, 11 founders met the criteria (Bateson, Berry, Bitner, Brown, Chase, Edvardsson, Grönroos, Gummesson, Parasuraman, Schneider and Zeithaml) and were invited to join Bowen and Fisk – founders that also met the criteria as coauthors. Ten founders then answered a set of questions regarding their careers as service scholars and the state of the field.

Insightful reflections were provided by each of the ten pioneering founders. In addition, based on their synthesis of the reflections, Bowen and Fisk developed nine wisdom themes for service researchers to consider and to possibly act upon.

The service research field is in its fifth decade. This article offers a unique way to learn directly from the pioneering founders about the still-relevant history of the field, the founders' lives and contributions as service scholars and the founders' hopes and concerns for the service research field.

The customer contact approach to service has been at the core of service theory since the 1970s. It suggests that the potential operating efficiency of a service is inversely related to the extent of customer contact with the provider's operations and that various service design issues are dictated by the presence or absence of customer contact. The purpose of this article is to reevaluate the customer contact approach in light of advanced digital technologies.

The authors review the origins and history of the customer contact approach and show ways it has been refined in research literature. From that they demonstrate how the refined approach can be applied to contemporary conditions.

Recent advances in digital technologies have indeed required us to revise our conceptualization of customer contact. There is now a blurring between front-office and back-office operations. Emerging technologies are allowing customers to have high-contact experiences with low-contact efficiencies.

Going forward, conceptualizations of customer contact are becoming increasingly complex and requiring increasingly complex models. Armed with self-service technologies, customers are able to permeate the “buffered core” of service businesses. Artificial intelligence and anthropomorphic devices have further blurred the distinction between front-office and back-office operations. Research will need to consider new forms of technology-enabled customer contact.

Customer contact is no longer limited to interpersonal interactions and the relationships between service providers and customers are increasingly complex. Customers may interact with automated service providers, or service providers may interact with customer technologies. New forms of customer contact may not involve humans at all, but instead involve technologies interacting with technologies.

The customer contact approach to service was one of the original models of service design. By revisiting and revising the model we bring it in-line with the realities of the contemporary service economy.

The “service factory” has been proposed as a new approach to manufacturing strategy. The information, problem‐solving, sales and support dimensions which underlie a service factory are reviewed. A strategic planning methodology by which it can be applied is provided, and five research questions which might be addressed through empirical study are raised.

Looks at operations management with a particular focus on the west coast of the USA. Considers two aspects: the first being curriculum development and the second relating to teaching and research. Gives a detailed view of the type of courses offered in the field. Also gives details of research being conducted in the area.

Current approaches to service design and service quality have provided second order principles that fail to account for underlying cognitive processes of customers in service encounters. It is proposed that behavioral science research should be used to address this shortcoming, and five “first order” principles are presented based upon a review of the behavioral science literature.

This paper provides a cross‐country examination of service management practice and performance of service organizations in the UK, USA and Germany. The findings reported are based on a sample of firms from the international service study (ISS) from four service sectors: financial services, professional services, hotels, and utilities. The paper argues that generally there are differences in services management practices and performance and, more specifically, that service quality performance may be explained by the nature and market dynamics of the service sector within the individual countries.

Consider these accolades: 14 properties in the Top 100 World’s Best Hotels; award for the first ever AAA five‐diamond rating; top honors award from Travel + Leisure every year since 1997; and most important of all, clear leader from 16,000 travelers’ votes for the hotel chain with the best service. Obviously, when the Ritz‐Carlton hotel company says “We sell service” it is more than just a catchy sound bite. In fact, selling service is something that every member of the organization’s work force takes very seriously indeed. As a result, Ritz‐Carlton is the only company in the service category to have won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award twice. Unsurprisingly, customers come back.

In their seminal book, The Experience Economy, Pine and Gilmore point out that customers buy experiences and are willing to pay a steep premium for them and hence service organizations should try to make them more fun. The purpose of this paper (and the premise of the recent book) is that services can be redesigned using psychological principles to deliver positive experiences for any kind of service, not just those that lend themselves to fun; by definition, satisfaction with a subconscious aspect of a service cannot be explained by the customer; and the psychological aspects of service interactions have to be approached with the same level of rigor as that are used to design processes that deliver the technical features of the service.

A point of view on the gap and opportunities in the field.

The authors show that there is an opportunity to extend the service operations field.

Enables managers and researchers to think about new approaches for designing experiences.

Valuable in a number of areas including healthcare.

Presents a new point of view.

Notes how service encounters have tended to be viewed as an interaction between service providers and service customers. Examines situations where the main encounter is the interaction between the facility and the customer. Considers different perspectives for planning service facilities – operational, locational, atmospheric/image, consumer use, contact personnel. Argues that congruent facilities are those that can succeed in integrating these competing perspectives.

Offers a fresh outlook for managing the delicate interaction between the customer and the contact employee in the service environment. Emphasizes that the quality of the customer‐employee interfacehas a great effect on customers′ perceptions of the quality and value of the service, as well as on their satisfaction. Suggests a model of how companies can improve this interface by treating employees ascustomers and customers as employees, thus developing lower cost and higher quality services and also higher levels of satisfaction on the part of both customers and employees. Recommends various steps for management to take.