The Impact of Augmented Reality on the Technical Customer Service Value Chain

Given to the fact, that the leading innovation companies in the field of consumer IT announced the production and distribution of Augmented Reality (AR) devices, the previously expensive technology dropped in prices. This makes them affordable not only for big but also for small and medium sized companies; subsequently, new fields of business are opened up. Especially the Technical Customer Service (TCS) can benefit from new and affordable mobile technology. Due to the variety of tasks and his operating place at the site of the machinery, the TCS technician has to be provided with current and case-related contextual information in a short time. Above that, the environmental issues such as oil-smeared hands during the service, repair and maintenance case require innovative technologies to support the technicians at their point of service. Goal of this contribution is the identification of the phases of the TCS value chain that can benefit from specific features of AR technologies. In differentiation to existing literature, this conceptual paper focuses on the business process of TCS not only on the technology of AR itself.

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