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This article develops a strategic framework for using artificial intelligence (AI) to engage customers for different service benefits. This framework lays out guidelines of how to use different AIs to engage customers based on considerations of nature of service task, service offering, service strategy, and service process. AI develops from mechanical, to thinking, and to feeling. As AI advances to a higher intelligence level, more human service employees and human intelligence (HI) at the intelligence levels lower than that level should be used less. Thus, at the current level of AI development, mechanical service should be performed mostly by mechanical AI, thinking service by both thinking AI and HI, and feeling service mostly by HI. Mechanical AI should be used for standardization when service is routine and transactional, for cost leadership, and mostly at the service delivery stage. Thinking AI should be used for personalization when service is data-rich and utilitarian, for quality leadership, and mostly at the service creation stage. Feeling AI should be used for relationalization when service is relational and high touch, for relationship leadership, and mostly at the service interaction stage. We illustrate various AI applications for the three major AI benefits, providing managerial guidelines for service providers to leverage the advantages of AI as well as future research implications for service researchers to investigate AI in service from modeling, consumer, and policy perspectives.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly reshaping service by performing various tasks, constituting a major source of innovation, yet threatening human jobs. We develop a theory of AI job replacement to address this double-edged impact. The theory specifies four intelligences required for service tasks—mechanical, analytical, intuitive, and empathetic—and lays out the way firms should decide between humans and machines for accomplishing those tasks. AI is developing in a predictable order, with mechanical mostly preceding analytical, analytical mostly preceding intuitive, and intuitive mostly preceding empathetic intelligence. The theory asserts that AI job replacement occurs fundamentally at the task level, rather than the job level, and for "lower" (easier for AI) intelligence tasks first. AI first replaces some of a service job's tasks, a transition stage seen as augmentation, and then progresses to replace human labor entirely when it has the ability to take over all of a job's tasks. The progression of AI task replacement from lower to higher intelligences results in predictable shifts over time in the relative importance of the intelligences for service employees. An important implication from our theory is that analytical skills will become less important, as AI takes over more analytical tasks, giving the "softer" intuitive and empathetic skills even more importance for service employees. Eventually, AI will be capable of performing even the intuitive and empathetic tasks, which enables innovative ways of human–machine integration for providing service but also results in a fundamental threat for human employment.

Information technology (IT)-related service is the strategic management of the creation and delivery of service in which information and communication technology (referred to as IT here) plays a substantial role. IT can serve as a facilitator (e.g., facilitates access to customer information and customer communication) or enabler (e.g., enables value cocreation), serves as the context (e.g., mobile phone market or e-commerce), or is itself service (e.g., social networking sites or information goods). There are three essential characteristics of IT-related service—it is information-intensive, customer-centric, and multidisciplinary. IT-related service is information-intensive. The ability to communicate (firm-to-customer, firm-to-firm, and customer-to-customer) anytime, anywhere, and to anyone, is significantly facilitated by the recent technology trends of big data, cloud computing, and mobile and networking platforms. IT-related service is customer-centric. The use of IT, both by firms and by customers, alleviates the common observation that there is a trade-off between customer satisfaction and productivity improvement for service. Customers are able to talk back to firms with their new communication power and firms are better able to cost-efficiently satisfy their customers. The study of IT-related service is thus inherently multidisciplinary involving such fields as marketing, strategic management, computer science/information systems, and operations management/organizational research. The results of the IT-service transformation are that IT blurs the distinction between goods and service; service is becoming more goods-like and goods are acquiring the characteristics of service. The Journal of Service Research special issue on IT-related service brings together all of these elements, and provides rich strategic implications for managers.