CERS Research Seminar

Professor Ingo Karpen Opens in new window , will present his paper "Enhancing Customer Success Management through Design Thinking" in collaboration with Professors Michael Kleinaltenkamp and Joona Keränen.

Ingo Oswald Karpen is a Professor of Business and Design at the Service Research Centre (CTF), Karlstad University (Sweden), and the Adelaide Business School, University of Adelaide (Australia). Larissa Becker is the host.

Following that, Maik Grimberg will present his work, with Ingo Karpen serving as the opponent.

The seminarwill take place on February 3, from 13:00 to 15:00, in room G226f (2nd floor, Arkadia 28 building).

Ingo's Abstract

Customer success management is emerging into an important approach for business-to-business firms to help their customers realise expected value creation. In essence, business solution providers seek to strengthen their customer relationships and outcomes by monitoring and advancing the usage of provided solutions. This accumulates in the what researchers refer to as experienced rather than expected value-in-use. While clarity regarding the conceptual nature of customer success management and its activities is evolving, the facilitation and implementation of the approach remains challenging given limited theoretical and managerial guidelines for success. Another approach that focuses on customer experiences and value-in-use is design thinking as a systematic pathway to problem-solving, innovation, and shared value creation. We argue that design thinking is a natural ally of customer success management and can enhance its execution. We explore this relationship through connecting design thinking capability with customer success management activities. In this presentation I will focus on the potential nexus of both approaches and treat it as a paper development workshop to advance ‘the how’ of customer success management.