Expanding the Boundaries of Service Design Research: Social Media Service Encounters

Service encounter research is primarily dominated by traditional service interactions in the form of face-to-face and remote interactions between service providers and their customers. With the proliferation of Web 2.0 technology applications and social media platforms, many businesses extended their service provision to include social media. Surprisingly, there is very limited academic research investigating social media service encounters (SMSE). The purpose of this research is, hence, to address this gap by offering insight into SMSE and to highlight what issues service providers should consider when they design/redesign their service offerings to include social media platforms.

This research offers valuable insight into service design literature by expanding service interactions to include social media platforms. Given the transparency of social media communications, this is one of the early studies that examine how social media service encounters are designed and how customers’ experiences are reshaped in this new servicescape.