De-humanizing the customer experience: a conceptual framework

Technologies like smart services, artificial intelligence and cloud-based systems are reengineering current best practices, de-humanizing the customer experience and leading to new forms of interactions between human and machines. The topic is quite new in marketing and management. In particular, the effects of sales and marketing automation on customer experience are quite under investigated. This theoretical paper will develop a conceptual framework to find out variables moderating the relationship between automation (SMA) processes and customer experience (CX), as well as factors impacting positively and negatively on it. Important managerial implications derive from this study given the increasing number of companies who will approach the topic fast, by prompting to re-design daily operations and inherently change customer-firm interactions.