Improving service processes with Near Field Communication technology

A common objective of conducting services more efficiently is driving the introduction of new technologies to service processes. This paper presents two explanatory case studies, in which a Near Field Communication (NFC) technology is used with an aim to improve the quality of services and the effectiveness of service processes. Thus, the impact and suitability of the NFC technology to business-to-customer service processes is the main research problem addressed in this study. Theme interviews with key business stakeholders of pilots were used as the research method for analysing case studies. The results of this study indicate that the use of NFC brought both advantages and challenges to the service processes. Although demographic background of the pilot customers was very versatile, most customers experienced the touch-based user interface to be fast and easy to use and learn. In spite of these substantial advantages, pilot findings stress that there exist some challenges for the wide scale adoption of NFC in the services processes, such as the lack of NFC enabled phones. These challenges have to be overcome before NFC can provide significant benefits to business actors.