Complaining Customers as Innovation Contributors: Stimulating Service Innovation through Multichannel Complaint Management

This manuscript reviews the literature on an under researched field of customer integration into service innovation processes. By combining knowledge from two substantive research areas - customer complaint management and service innovation management -, we develop and discuss a conceptual framework for a promising form of (indirect) customer integration to stimulate service innovations. Specifically, we suggest companies to make use of multichannel complaint management since it bears potential to access unique customer experience information. We further explain which multichannel complaint barriers need to be addressed particularly to stimulate service innovation.