I, dr. Jeroen J.L. Schepers, am Associate Professor of Frontline Service and Innovation at the Innovation, Technology Entrepreneurship & Marketing (ITEM) group at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. My research interest is centered on managing the service delivery process by means of frontline service employees and technology. In studying such processes, I take an innovation focus. For detailed information, see...

• My Research Gate profile with all publications in PDF 

• My Google Scholar profile with all citation information

• My LinkedIn profile with all career information

• My Twitter feed with new developments

Research background

Many managers consider after-sales service a cost-only activity. However, plentiful face-to-face encounters provide frontline employees with excellent opportunities to gather firsthand customer reactions, create ideas to improve existing products and services, or even to come up with new ones. This requires to see employees and customers as a research & development resource. It also requires a different leadership style, other control and reward structures, and a reallocation of employees across service jobs and customers. The challenge is to balance innovation efforts in the frontline with job productivity/efficiency, and customer satisfaction.

In addition, companies are increasingly providing customers with technology-driven service delivery options that provide customers more control over the service, but dramatically change the relationship between customer and firm. For instance, hotels now implement check-in and luggage robots, call centers are replaced by artificial intelligence technologies such as voice and chat bots, and health care providers empower patients in their treatment with wearable trackers. Why and when do users adopt these innovations? Does it benefit or harm the value offered by the firm?

Output

I have published papers on these and other topics in Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing Management, Information & Management, among others. My current h-index is 16; i10-index is 16 (according to Google Scholar, updated December 2019).

Student and PhD supervision

I have supervised multiple PhD students whose work has been published in high-quality academic journals. I enjoy coaching young, talented people...

• to think critically;
• to conceptually model complex real-world service phenomena;
• to gather and analyze data in an academically valid and reliable way;
• to come up with valuable business implications;
• to write up their story in a concise, convincing, and attractive style;
• with the ultimate goal: to grow in their personal development and have a successful career within or outside of academia!

If you are interested in to deepen your knowledge in my field of research, and to invest in developing your personal skills to benefit your future career, then contact me for the possibilities for doing a Ph.D. under my supervision. I hold the right towards promotion (ius promovendi) and Eindhoven University of Technology offers attractive opportunities for external Ph.D. candidates ("externe promovendi"). We offer you a customized trajectory of 3 to 5 years in which you can combine the work at your company with a Ph.D. project at the university.

Valorization

On request, I also provide in-company workshops and seminars for top management teams or employees. Do you as a manager want to know ...

• where in your firm interventions are needed to improve your services and products?
• how you can better motivate your frontline employees to go the extra mile to satisfy the customer?
• how you can use information from customers in your new product/service development process?
• which employees should be assigned to which service jobs to maximize efficiency and/or innovation potential?

Then contact me for further information! 

• I hold an MSc and a BSc in Information Management (with honors) from the Faculty of Economics, Tilburg University.
• I have published papers in top marketing and business journals and presented and contributed to proceedings service and marketing conferences.
• I am an ad-hoc reviewer for Journal of Service Research, International Journal of Research in Marketing, and Journal of Product Innovation Management. 
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• I am the program manager of the Innovation Management master program at Eindhoven University of technology.
• I have been nominated multiple times and won the Industria Educational Award for best teacher.