Publications

April 15, 2019
Article

Why Anxious Customers Prefer Human Customer Service

By: Michelle A. Shell and Ryan W. Buell

Register to Read

March 2020
Teaching Note

Babcom: Opening Doors

By: Ryan W. Buell and Joshua D. Margolis

Teaching Note for HBS No. 418-026. View Details

September 2019 (Revised February 2020)
Teaching Note

Commonwealth Bank of Australia: Unbanklike Experimentation

By: Ryan W. Buell and Leslie K. John

Email mking@hbs.edu for a courtesy copy.

This Teaching Note explains the theory of the case and teaching plan for the case: Commonwealth Bank of Australia: Unbanklike Experimentation (619-018). In August 2017,... View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Experimentation; Banks and Banking; Credit Cards; Customer Focus and Relationships; Competitive Strategy; Banking Industry; Australia

April 2019
Article

Mitigating Malicious Envy: Why Successful Individuals Should Reveal Their Failures

By: Alison Wood Brooks, Karen Huang, Nicole Abi-Esber, Ryan W. Buell, Laura Huang and Brian Hall

People often feel malicious envy, a destructive interpersonal emotion, when they compare themselves to successful peers. Across three online experiments and a field experiment of entrepreneurs, we identify an interpersonal strategy that can mitigate feelings of... View Details

Keywords: Emotions; Perception; Interpersonal Communication; Communication Strategy

May 2011
Article

Think Customers Hate Waiting? Not So Fast...

By: Ryan W. Buell and Michael I. Norton

Managers typically look for ways to reduce wait time to increase customer satisfaction. New research suggests there's a better approach: showing customers a representation of the effort, whether literal or not, being expended on their behalf while they wait. (The... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Service Delivery; Consumer Behavior; Performance Effectiveness; Customer Satisfaction

September 2020
Case

Getaway

By: Ryan W. Buell and Amy Klopfenstein

Since its founding, Getaway’s service offering – tiny, modern cabins in the woods, located within a two-hour drive of major metropolitan areas – had been met with tremendous demand. Overworked and overconnected city dwellers reveled in the opportunity to take a break... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Service Operations; Management; Demand and Consumers; Marketing; Strategy; Accommodations Industry

Educators

Article

Can You Cut 'Turn Times' Without Adding Staff?

By: Ethan Bernstein and Ryan W. Buell

The president of RSA Ground, the subsidiary of Rising Sun Airlines responsible for servicing its planes at airports across Japan, goes undercover as a service crew member to discover how and whether his employees can speed up cleaning, checking, restocking, and... View Details

Keywords: Employee Empowerment; Employee Motivation; Turnaround; Service Operations; Employees; Motivation and Incentives; Leadership; Air Transportation Industry; Japan

18 Dec 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, December 18, 2018

Mitigating Malicious Envy: Why Successful Individuals Should Reveal Their Failures By: Brooks, Alison Wood, Karen Huang, Nicole Abi-Esber, Ryan W. Buell, Laura Huang, and Brian Hall Abstract—People often... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

21 Nov 2024
News

Mother Nurture

Julia Cole, Tina Keshani, and Sophia Richter (Illustration by Gisela Goppel) When Tina Keshani (MBA 2020), Julia Cole (MBA 2020), and Sophia Richter (MBA 2020) met at Startup Boot Camp in their first year at HBS, they quickly discovered... View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley

May 2015
Conference Presentation

Coming Up to Speed: Tradeoffs between Contextual Specialization and Non-Specialization

By: Hise O. Gibson, Ryan W. Buell and Prithwiraj Choudhury

May 2014
Conference Presentation

Employee Attributes Matters for Project Outcomes: But Which Ones?

By: Hise O. Gibson, Ryan W. Buell and Prithwiraj Choudhury

November–December 2020
Article

Lifting the Veil: The Benefits of Cost Transparency

By: Bhavya Mohan, Ryan W. Buell and Leslie K. John

Firms do not typically disclose information on their costs to produce a good to consumers. However, we provide evidence of when and why doing so can increase consumers’ purchase interest. Specifically, building on the psychology of disclosure and trust, we posit that... View Details

Keywords: Cost Transparency; Disclosure; Field Experiment; Cost; Trust; Consumer Behavior

SSRN

2021
Working Paper

Multi-location Workers in Multinational Firms? Tradeoffs in Contextual Specialization of Employees and Organizational Outcomes

By: Hise O. Gibson, Ryan W. Buell and Prithwiraj Choudhury

We study how “contextual specialization,” the act of focusing workers’ organizational tasks within a particular locational context, and “contextual non-specialization,” the practice of diversifying workers’ organizational tasks among multiple locational contexts,... View Details

Keywords: Talent and Talent Management; Performance; Experience and Expertise; Selection and Staffing; Strength and Weakness; Personal Development and Career

2023
Article

Evidence from the First Shared Medical Appointments (SMAs) Randomised Controlled Trial in India: SMAs Increase the Satisfaction, Knowledge, and Medication Compliance of Patients with Glaucoma

By: Nazlı Sönmez, Kavitha Srinivasan, Rengaraj Venkatesh, Ryan W. Buell and Kamalini Ramdas

In Shared Medical Appointments (SMAs), patients with similar conditions meet the physician together and each receives one-on-one attention. SMAs can improve outcomes and physician productivity. Yet privacy concerns have stymied adoption. In physician-deprived nations,... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Customer Satisfaction; Outcome or Result; India