Globally, trade and industry has shifted its focus from the traditional service delivery approaches to various alternative practices to be more successful, cost efficient, customer orientated, flexible and innovative. This shift in focus has lead to organisations applying a customer centric approach in their business. In order to understand customer centricity, it is necessary to be familiar with the term customer service. Customer service is the offering of services to customers before, during and after a purchase. It is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction, i.e. the feeling that a product or service has met the customer’s expectations. Although it seems to be difficult to create and maintain a positive service culture, the implementation and upkeep of service excellence hold numerous advantages for organisations in both the short and the long term. Excellent customer service leads to an increase in profits as well as assist organisations in achieving a competitive advantage. Organisations with a customer centric approach can expect to experience a 30% higher return on investment on their marketing efforts compared to their peers not embracing customer centricity. Moreover, exceptional customer service will lead to customer satisfaction, which in turn, may well lead to customer loyalty which is crucial in the current volatile economic market. Recent economic instability triggered financial uncertainty in trade and industry. This causes difficulties for organisations to gain a competitive advantage and predict consumer behaviour. The organisations that will survive and outlive these uncertain circumstances will be those that maintain a customer centric focus. A customer centric focus implies that organisations place their customers first by concentrating on their needs and behaviours. These organisations will also attempt to eliminate internal factors that constrain service offerings to customers. Furthermore, customer centricity includes the alignment of resources of the organisation to successfully respond to the ever-changing needs of the customer, while building mutually profitable relationships. The main difference between customer service and customer centricity appears to relate to meaningful changes that customer centric organisations make in addressing their customers’ expectations and providing reciprocal support. Customer centricity seems to take customer service thus a step further with regards to service delivery. The healthcare environment forms an important part of trade and industry and economic instability also affects this sphere. In this study, the focus filters to the healthcare industry in South Africa and the role and importance of a customer centric approach to doctors. The South African healthcare environment consists of two sectors, namely large public (managed by government) and smaller, higher quality private healthcare. The South African healthcare system is unique to those of other countries as it is dynamic and multifaceted. The legislative framework within the healthcare system gives South African citizens the right to access healthcare services. Due to a skewed financing system in healthcare, this framework has a major impact on both the public and private sectors. The private healthcare industry in South Africa has grown dramatically with the number of beds doubling between 1988 and 1993. This was mainly due to the international trends toward privatisation and advanced by government's policies for privatisation. This resulted in the migration of doctors from public service to private practices. Specialists play an integral part in providing healthcare services. The private hospital industry provides admitting and treating facilities where doctors prescribe the care that hospitals should deliver to patients. This interplay between private hospitals and specialists emphasises that specialists are important customers of private hospitals. The importance of obtaining and retaining doctors is also highlighted in the vision and mission of the top three private hospital groups in South Africa, namely Mediclinic, Netcare and Life Healthcare. Many challenges exist to grow and maintain patient volumes for the private hospital sector. One thereof is to establish doctor (and their practices') support by building an optimum mix of loyal specialist and general practitioner (GP) networks for the hospital. The management and nurturing of relationships with doctors through these networks could lead to a competitive advantage for private hospitals. A study was therefore conducted to gain insight as to how specialists define customer centricity as well as their expectations of private hospitals when applying a customer centric approach towards doctors. The research was of qualitative nature. An experimental research design was applied and included 11 participants. Semi-structured interviews with specialists from one of the top three private hospital groups were conducted in order to gather relevant data. The interviews were transcribed and coded. Results were analysed and interpreted via thorough content analysis. Participants highlighted the following elements as important when defining customer centricity: customer focus, satisfaction, facilities and resources, accessibility, safety and cost effectiveness. In addition, participants confirmed that the following aspects marked their expectancies of a customer centric organisation: quality patient care and services, facilities and resources, effective communication, support and cooperation, provision of sufficient and well trained staff, mutual financial gains, appreciation, resolving of problems, involvement in decision making and respect. Conclusions and recommendations pertaining to future research were also provided. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Globally, trade and industry has shifted its focus from the traditional service delivery approaches to various alternative practices to be more successful, cost efficient, customer orientated, flexible and innovative. This shift in focus has lead to organisations applying a customer centric approach in their business. In order to understand customer centricity, it is necessary to be familiar with the term customer service. Customer service is the offering of services to customers before, during and after a purchase. It is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction, i.e. the feeling that a product or service has met the customer’s expectations. Although it seems to be difficult to create and maintain a positive service culture, the implementation and upkeep of service excellence hold numerous advantages for organisations in both the short and the long term. Excellent customer service leads to an increase in profits as well as assist organisations in achieving a competitive advantage. Organisations with a customer centric approach can expect to experience a 30% higher return on investment on their marketing efforts compared to their peers not embracing customer centricity. Moreover, exceptional customer service will lead to customer satisfaction, which in turn, may well lead to customer loyalty which is crucial in the current volatile economic market. Recent economic instability triggered financial uncertainty in trade and industry. This causes difficulties for organisations to gain a competitive advantage and predict consumer behaviour. The organisations that will survive and outlive these uncertain circumstances will be those that maintain a customer centric focus. A customer centric focus implies that organisations place their customers first by concentrating on their needs and behaviours. These organisations will also attempt to eliminate internal factors that constrain service offerings to customers. Furthermore, customer centricity includes the alignment of resources of the organisation to successfully respond to the ever-changing needs of the customer, while building mutually profitable relationships. The main difference between customer service and customer centricity appears to relate to meaningful changes that customer centric organisations make in addressing their customers’ expectations and providing reciprocal support. Customer centricity seems to take customer service thus a step further with regards to service delivery. The healthcare environment forms an important part of trade and industry and economic instability also affects this sphere. In this study, the focus filters to the healthcare industry in South Africa and the role and importance of a customer centric approach to doctors. The South African healthcare environment consists of two sectors, namely large public (managed by government) and smaller, higher quality private healthcare. The South African healthcare system is unique to those of other countries as it is dynamic and multifaceted. The legislative framework within the healthcare system gives South African citizens the right to access healthcare services. Due to a skewed financing system in healthcare, this framework has a major impact on both the public and private sectors. The private healthcare industry in South Africa has grown dramatically with the number of beds doubling between 1988 and 1993. This was mainly due to the international trends toward privatisation and advanced by government's policies for privatisation. This resulted in the migration of doctors from public service to private practices. Specialists play an integral part in providing healthcare services. The private hospital industry provides admitting and treating facilities where doctors prescribe the care that hospitals should deliver to patients. This interplay between private hospitals and specialists emphasises that specialists are important customers of private hospitals. The importance of obtaining and retaining doctors is also highlighted in the vision and mission of the top three private hospital groups in South Africa, namely Mediclinic, Netcare and Life Healthcare. Many challenges exist to grow and maintain patient volumes for the private hospital sector. One thereof is to establish doctor (and their practices') support by building an optimum mix of loyal specialist and general practitioner (GP) networks for the hospital. The management and nurturing of relationships with doctors through these networks could lead to a competitive advantage for private hospitals. A study was therefore conducted to gain insight as to how specialists define customer centricity as well as their expectations of private hospitals when applying a customer centric approach towards doctors. The research was of qualitative nature. An experimental research design was applied and included 11 participants. Semi-structured interviews with specialists from one of the top three private hospital groups were conducted in order to gather relevant data. The interviews were transcribed and coded. Results were analysed and interpreted via thorough content analysis. Participants highlighted the following elements as important when defining customer centricity: customer focus, satisfaction, facilities and resources, accessibility, safety and cost effectiveness. In addition, participants confirmed that the following aspects marked their expectancies of a customer centric organisation: quality patient care and services, facilities and resources, effective communication, support and cooperation, provision of sufficient and well trained staff, mutual financial gains, appreciation, resolving of problems, involvement in decision making and respect. Conclusions and recommendations pertaining to future research were also provided. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Banking through insufficiently coordinated and non-integrated channels (Multi-Channel) is slowly being discarded. With Omni-Channel banking, where channels are integrated and data and information are shared across cross channels, customers are in control of the channels they wish to use. Factors influencing the organisational decision to transition from Multi-Channel to Omni-Channel hasn't been fully explored. Is this decision responding to internal factors like efficiency improvements, or is it driven by external factors like customer demands, trying to enhance customer experience, gaining competitive advantage over the competitors, expanding the business by introducing new business models, or trying to gain access to smart technologies for financial benefit? This dissertation presents research findings into the investigation of factors that influence the organisational decision to transition from Multi-Channel to Omni-Channel banking. A positivist case study with inductive reasoning was adopted. Qualitative data was collected from a single organisation through interviews together with observations of the strategy documents between January 2019 and April 2019. An initial conceptual model was derived from the literature review to guide data collection, after which thematic analysis was used to analyse the data and develop an emergent theory. The key findings from the research study are that a customer centric approach informs the decision to transition. The customer is at the centre of the omni-channel strategy: that is through an enhanced customer experience or timeously responding to customer demands. Other factors are either enabling this strategy, like technological innovations, and efficiency improvements or are the outcome of the strategy like customer satisfaction, revenue or cost optimisation, and competitive advantage. The key implications are that organisations must pay more attention to the customer journey and ensure that they advance in the Customer Experience Capability Maturity Model. Most successful business transitions to the Omni-Channel strategy require a transformation in organizational culture, operations and processes, and the underlying technologies.

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The main aim of the study was to determine which measurement tool, existing or adapted, would be able to determine the levels of customer centricity within the sales channels of a specific organisation, operating in the South African financial industry. A literary study showed that in order to determine the levels of customer centricity, customer experience should be measured. Six questionnaires were administered, namely, EXQ, NPS, CES, Customer satisfaction, Word-of-Mouth and Behavioural loyalty intention. The data showed a statistical significance and a positive relationship between all the constructs within all the questionnaires except with that of CES. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

The main aim of the study was to determine which measurement tool, existing or adapted, would be able to determine the levels of customer centricity within the sales channels of a specific organisation, operating in the South African financial industry. A literary study showed that in order to determine the levels of customer centricity, customer experience should be measured. Six questionnaires were administered, namely, EXQ, NPS, CES, Customer satisfaction, Word-of-Mouth and Behavioural loyalty intention. The data showed a statistical significance and a positive relationship between all the constructs within all the questionnaires except with that of CES. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Submitted by Marlene Santos (marlene.bc.ufg@gmail.com) on 2014-11-28T17:56:33Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Luana Silva Borges - 2013.pdf: 1536324 bytes, checksum: 105913bf6578238952077c292b0ff492 (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2014-12-04T14:10:45Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Luana Silva Borges - 2013.pdf: 1536324 bytes, checksum: 105913bf6578238952077c292b0ff492 (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-04T14:10:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Luana Silva Borges - 2013.pdf: 1536324 bytes, checksum: 105913bf6578238952077c292b0ff492 (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-10-17 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The critical fortune of Clarice Lispector treated, in much, female characters who struggle against the anguish and the nullification within wealthy families. Are women who live in bourgeois contexts, facing daily exhaustive dedication to others: canceled amid children, husbands, the society events that pressure them. However, if the studies favored, greatly, the transgressors streams of consciousness of these protagonists, there is a hue less discussed by critics. It regards the female profiles subjectified in contexts economically peripheral. Here, we studied two of these productions, seeking to understand how Lucrécia Neves, in A cidade sitiada, novel, 1949, and Macabéa in A hora da estrela, novel, 1977, are subjectified in these contexts of cancellation and decentering. We note that, in writing about female characters doubly canceled – because women in a patriarchal society, because the poor in a capitalist society – Lispector uses at least one psychological ceaseless flow, the inner monologues, that consecrated her. The author cares, instead, to the externalization of the self, which meddles into space and is absorbed by the objects. Front of women on the fringes, beings pressured by excentricities, because they do not occupy economic or patriarchal centers, the writer chooses not to narrate them in deep self-reflection. Here we see the critical sagacity of Clarice. She outlines her poor heroines, ironically, through their voices that barely exceed the hardness of objects. These voices are coming out failed when trying to transcend reality, are voices that can barely hold an articulated language. However, when entering the bodies of Lucrécia Neves and Macabéa in the body-text, Lispector dismantles, by her irony and sharpened metaphor, the joints of power installed by patriarchy, destabilizing essentialized gender stereotypes. / A fortuna crítica de Clarice Lispector tratou, em muito, de personagens femininas que se debatem ante a angústia e a anulação no seio de famílias abastadas. São mulheres que vivem em contextos burgueses, enfrentando exaustivos cotidianos de dedicação a outrem: anuladas em meio a filhos, a maridos, a eventos da sociedade que as pressionam. Entretanto, se os estudos privilegiaram, sobremaneira, os fluxos de consciência transgressores destas protagonistas, há um matiz menos abordado pela crítica. Ele diz respeito aos perfis femininos subjetivados em contextos economicamente periféricos. Aqui, estudamos duas dessas produções, buscando entender como Lucrécia Neves, em A cidade sitiada, romance de 1949, e Macabéa, em A hora da estrela, novela de 1977, são subjetivadas nesses contextos de anulação e des-centramento. Constatamos que, ao escrever sobre personagens femininas duplamente anuladas – porque mulheres em uma sociedade patriarcal; porque pobres em uma sociedade capitalista –, Lispector utiliza menos um fluir psicológico incessante, os monólogos interiores que tanto a consagraram. A escritora zela, ao contrário, pela exteriorização do eu dessas personagens, que se imiscui completamente ao espaço e é absorvido pelos objetos. Diante de mulheres à margem, seres pressionados devido a suas excentricidades, pois não ocupam os centros econômicos ou patriarcais, a escritora opta por não narrá-las em autorreflexões profundas. Vemos aí a sagacidade crítica de Clarice. Ela contorna suas heroínas pobres, ironicamente, por meio de suas vozes que mal conseguem ultrapassar a dureza dos objetos. São vozes que saem falidas quando tentam transcender a realidade concreta. São vozes que mal conseguem se apoderar de uma linguagem articulada. Todavia, ao inserir os corpos de Lucrécia Neves e de Macabéa no corpo-texto, Lispector desmantela, pela ironia e por sua metáfora afiada, as articulações de poder instaladas pelo patriarcado, desestabilizando os estereótipos essencializados de gênero.

The customer takes over the center stage of tomorrow’s economy. In the wake of customer-centric service industries, traditional intermediaries are becoming increasingly obsolete and are substituted by self-services. Additionally, because of the on-going digitalization, e-services provide various alternatives to the customer. Thus, self-directed customers must overlook and manage an increasingly complex network of services and providers themselves. Technology is a central factor in this context. On the one hand, it is the leading cause of the current challenges whereby, on the contrary, it is the key to solving them. This work proposes the concept of Customer-centric Service Management (CSM). It is an interdisciplinary approach to adopt the service composition process from the field of business and IT to the particularities of consumers. Combining modular services to individualized and valuable service bundles is its objective. Making this type of interaction accessible for consumers requires a substantial reduction of complexity in the front end. The key to achieving this is by taking an outside-in perspective. This means understanding the decision process of the customer and speaking his language in a field that has been dominated by formal description standards and product parameters for a long time. This work hypothesizes that a paradigm-shift enables consumer-driven service com-position. Thus, the concept of customer-centricity is applied to service management. By letting the consumer describe himself, respectively his distinct needs and requirements, a better customer value is achieved than by traditional product-centric approaches. Unlike existing product-centric configuration tools, customer-centric configurators do not elicit product parameters. Instead, they rely on a structured description of customers’ intentions and values captured in a domain specific customer model. Consequently, the concept applies to a more abstract level of service categories instead of specific product instances. This refers to the pre-purchase phase of the consumer journey – a phase that is widely neglected by academia and practice yet. This work analyzes the concept of CSM on a technical, process-related, and strategic level. Three elements are identified as the core of CSM: the customer model, the service model, and the composition logic. Each item is elaborated in detail at the example of financial services. The concept of CSM facilitates current knowledge from different fields of research and finally implements them into a prototype. This demonstrator is the basis for a large field experiment to answer two questions: in the first place, does customer-centric service composition provide higher customer value regarding perceived complexity, solution utility and process utility? Moreover, secondly, does a reduced complexity, in respect of the amount of information that needs to be handled, with-out changing the configuration paradigm, have a greater impact on customer value? Empirical validation shows that the customer-centric approach has significant ad-vantages over the product-centric one. It offers higher customer value with respect to perceived complexity, perceived solution utility and perceived user experience. This proves the high potential of this concept. The findings of this thesis form the basis of a new form of customer interaction and enable new business models.:1 Introduction 1.1 Initial Situation and Problem 1.2 Contribution and Research Question 1.3 Research Approach 1.4 Thesis Structure 2 Foundations 2.1 Services 2.2 Complexity 2.3 Individualization 2.4 Service Management 3 Conceptualization of Customer-centric Service Management 3.1 Customer-centric Service Management 3.2 Customer Model 3.3 Service Model 3.4 Service Composition Logic 4 Empirical Validation 4.1 Objectives 4.2 Conceptualization 4.3 Prototype 4.4 Experiment Design and Empirical Testing 4.5 Data Analysis and Results 5 Results, Evaluation and Outlook 5.1 Summary and Results 5.2 Customer-centric Service Management as a Business-Model – Practical Startup Experiences 5.3 Outlook and Impact of CSM 5.4 Limitations and Need for Future Research 6 References Curriculum Vitae Bibliographic Data

The research of this study was conducted at Malmö Hospital in collaborationwith Region Skåne. In this paper various methodologies from interactiondesign are used to explore how patient participation in hospital can be aidedand improved. It investigates what aspects of motivational design can bebeneficial to healthcare. The literature used in this study analyses the currentwork values of Malmö Hospital and how it relates to motivational and servicedesign. The study presents design findings based on a service mapping of thehospital along with an evaluation of the current working conditions. Finally,a concept is presented designed to enhance communication between patients and caregivers by visualizing patient water balance.

[pt] As igrejas batistas possuem características singulares, como o princípio da autonomia da igreja local. Cada congregação é uma unidade autônoma, ligada às demais pelo vínculo denominacional, através da Convenção Batista Brasileira, Convenções estaduais e Associações regionais. A autonomia da igreja local favorece a diversidade cúltica, pois cada igreja é livre para adotar o seu estilo. Embora seja um belo e essencial princípio batista, a autonomia favorece a pluralidade litúrgica, muitas vezes com a daninha influência de elementos que comprometem a centralidade cristológica no culto, como a liturgia neopentecostal, as literaturas de mercado e a ausência de reflexão teológica. O conhecimento da Teologia do Culto Cristão, mesmo em tradições diferentes, que até mesmo antecederam à tradição batista, é um caminho necessário para o resgate da centralidade cristológica no culto. Esse resgate das riquezas da tradição cúltica em diálogo com as igrejas batistas permitirá uma leitura justa e coerente da denominação batista, oferecendo respostas para os possíveis problemas de esvaziamento da centralidade cristológica no culto. Uma vez que o universo batista brasileiro, ou até mesmo fluminense, é muito amplo, para fins de análise da realidade litúrgica das igrejas batistas, com dados advindos de momento empírico na pesquisa, fez-se um corte geográfico na região litorânea fluminense, focando a pesquisa exclusivamente com as igrejas vinculadas à Associação Batista Litorânea Fluminense. A pesquisa, que alcançou membros de aproximadamente 90 por cento das referidas igrejas, além de pastores e seminaristas (estudantes de Teologia), revelou realidades que confirmam a necessidade da proposta de resgate da centralidade cristológica no culto, sendo fonte de pesquisa e reflexão para as igrejas batistas. Embora as igrejas batistas não adotem nenhum calendário ou manual litúrgico, mesmo diante do princípio de autonomia de cada congregação local, há uma fé batista , há uma tradição que perdura gerações. Seria um prejuízo às igrejas batistas e seus cultos virarem as costas ao assunto. O objetivo não é uniformizar o culto batista, até mesmo porque isso feriria frontalmente o jeito batista de ser . Pelo contrário, o objetivo é oferecer respostas, é dar subsídio para uma reflexão teológica consistente, capaz de fomentar valores imprescindíveis para o culto verdadeiramente cristológico e expurgar influências negativas. / [en] Baptist churches hold unique characteristics, like the autonomy principle of local churches. Every single congregation is an autonomous unit, bound to the other ones by the denominational tie, through Brazilian Baptist Convention, state Conventions and regional Associations. The local church autonomy benefits the service diversity since each church is free to adopt its own style. Although it may be a beautiful and essencial Baptist principle, the autonomy favors liturgical plurality, often with harmful influence elements that puts into risk the christological centricity at services, like the neopentecostal liturgy, the gospel literatures available on the market and the lack of theological reflection. The knowledge of the Christian service theology, even in different traditions, including those ones that preceded the Baptist tradition, is a necessary way to rescue the christological centricity at services. This rescue of the service tradition wealth together with the Baptist churches will allow a fair and coherent reading of the Baptist denomination, offering aswers to the possibles problems of the emptying in the service christological centricity. Once the Brazilian Baptist universe, or even the Rio de Janeiro one, is very wide, with the purpose of analysing the liturgical reality of Baptist churches, with data resulted from an empirical moment in the research, it was made a geographical cut in the coastal region of Rio de Janeiro, focusing exclusively on the churches linked to the Baptist Association of Rio de Janeiro coastal cities. The research, that reached members of nearly 90 percent of those churches, besides pastors and seminarists (Theology students), revealed realities that confirm the necessity of the proposed rescue of the service christological centricity, becoming source of research and reflection to Baptist churches. Although Baptist churches do not adopt any calendar or liturgical manual, even in the face of the autonomy principle of each local congregation, there is a Baptist faith , there is a tradition that lasts generations. It would be a loss to Baptist churches and their services to ignore the matter. The objective is not to uniform the Baptist service, even because this would completely harm the way of being Baptist. On the contrary, the objective is to offer answers, to give support to a solid theological reflection, capable of fomenting essencial values to a true christological service and expurgate negative influences.