Background: Traditional banks in Sweden are undergoing major transformations from interacting mainly through physical touchpoints with a product-centric approach to an expanded range of digitalised touchpoints and a more customer-centric approach. This transformation exemplifies what in research is referred to as digital servitisation. Purpose: To explore perceived implications in the banks’ relationship to customers when they digitalise customer touchpoints. Furthermore, to understand how different roles involved in customer relationship management and customer touchpoints - strategic, analytical and operational perspectives - perceive the work needed to interact with customers through different touchpoints. Method: Through a qualitative, interpretative, multiple case study two traditional Swedish banks are explored in their work with their relationships with their customers and digitalised touchpoints. The empirical data is gathered through 15 semi-structured interviews with respondents working analytically, operationally and strategically to gain as representative an understanding of the general perception among employees as possible. Findings: Using a thematic analysis, the thesis presents six themes; (1) Customers in charge of interactions, (2) Becoming more complex, (3) Relationships are more interchangeable, (4) Rethinking relationship components, (5) Connecting the dots and (6) Integrating the old with the new. The themes are clustered as Changes (1-3) and Adaptations (4-6). Conclusions: The thesis concludes that the relationship between banks and their customers has and continues to change in the transformation of digital servitisation. The demands and behaviours of the customer are perceived to change, simultaneously they gain more power over the relationship and the banks become more interchangeable. Thus, the banks must change along with the relationship to adhere to the customers’ demands, in order to stay relevant and keep their competitive advantage. At the time being, there are several ways that the banks believe that this can be done, but continue to express that they are still exploring to find the right approach and how to execute it.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:liu-205546 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Nilsson, Axelia, Jacobs Brüllhoff, Andrea |
| Publisher | Linköpings universitet, Informationssystem och digitalisering, Linköpings universitet, Filosofiska fakulteten |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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