The Customer Contact Model for Organization Design

TLDR

Organization design literature has largely relied on descriptive models of structure and operations. This paper proposes a normative model for designing service organizations. The model treats customer contact as a key performance variable, classifies firms along a contact taxonomy with 13 propositions, and guides managerial decisions through decoupling factors. The model yields 13 propositions distinguishing high‑ from low‑contact services and identifies factors that support or hinder decoupling to align service delivery with objectives.

Abstract

The literature on organization design has been dominated by descriptive models in its dealing with structure and operations. This paper takes an alternative view advocating the use of a normative model to be used in the design of service organizations. This model sees the extent of customer contact with the service organization as a major variable affecting system performance and advocates reconfiguring the structure of the service organization to reflect this impact. The discussion describes a taxonomy used to classify firms along the contact dimension and develops 13 propositions which convey critical distinctions between high and low contact services. Application of the model for managerial decision making involves the use of decoupling and the paper identifies factors which favor/disfavor decoupling in light of existing and desired service delivery objectives.