Customer Integration in Innovation Processes via Operating Information Systems

The positive effects of customer integration in corporate innovation activities are undisputed. Further, several concepts for an improved cooperation with customers have already been developed and even implemented in many cases. Most of these methods target a special group of customers, the so-called lead-users. Besides being proven as beneficial, this selected integration neglects the majority of a company’s human client interactions which occur in the often centralized service centers, for example call centers. Many studies confirm the innovation potential of these existing, regular customer interactions. This paper presents detailed requirements as well as an overall solution system for the integration of these customer contacts via service centers. Therefore, existing research was combined with quality function deployment and service system modeling.