Summary

Digital technology is disrupting the prerequisites for most firms in the service industry and frequently forces them to reassess the ratio of human interaction and technology use in service encounters. To retain competitiveness, it seems mandatory to increase service encounter efficiency by embedding digital technology into the existing processes. However, there is little empirical evidence on how such technological implementations affect the sentiments, attitudes, and behaviors of frontline employees. Likewise, research on interrelated customer responses is scarce. To address this matter, this book presents four distinct yet related studies to investigate the impact of digital technology on frontline employees, customers, and ultimately service firms. The results and implications provide meaningful insights for theory and practice.