Understanding corporate customers' service needs

Recognizing and understanding customers' needs and how they change provides important opportunities for innovation, sales growth, competitiveness and profits. We have carried out several research projects on service business and the value of service to customers. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to summarize our basic understanding of corporate customers' service needs, which has emerged during these research projects. We combine our experience of case studies with information collected from workshops and literature study. We discuss service needs and value from several viewpoints, such as risk, reference-dependence, financial and experiential value, systems and context specificity. We also describe the dynamic nature of customer needs. The results can be applied to companies as they develop their capabilities in customer understanding and service business development.