Connected retail refers to organizations that utilize digital technologies and information systems to connect their physical stores, online platforms, stakeholders, and customers into a digital service ecosystem. This ecosystem aims to create value and service in virtual and physical realms (Bowen, 2016). Although the average person may not notice any changes in the technology interfaces used in physical stores, the digital service ecosystems constantly evolve and alter the activities and roles of human employees and customers in the service chain (Larivière et al., 2017). In a connected retail organization, the conditions that shape the service encounter in physical stores constantly change. Employees must keep updating their skills through organizational learning to stay valuable in such an organization. This means that the conditions comprising the organization's sales and service training, including organizational knowledge, routines, methods, norms, values, and roles, must also change along with the workplace. 

 This working paper aims to understand how the conditions and content forming organizational sales and service training support or constrain salespeople's new roles and skills development as the service encounter in connected stores transforms. To achieve this, the author draws on recent developments in practice theories, particularly the theory of practice architectures (Mahon et al., 2017), which focuses on how practices are prefigured and shaped through arrangements within specific sites. Addressing the research memorandum of organizational education (Göhlich et al., 2018), the theory of practice architectures (TPA) offers a theoretical and analytical framework that provides resources to explore and describe interaction in the semantic, physical, and social dimensions of an organization and social encounters such as the service encounter.  

In the 1970s, the retail industry began its digital transformation by introducing computerized cash registers and point-of-sale (POS) systems. These innovations helped automate the transaction process during service encounters. In parallel, service work and the service encounter emerged as research fields, highlighting the social and emotional aspects of work in service organizations )Ikeler, 2016; Payne, 2009). Over the years, scholars from different disciplines and theoretical perspectives have explored service work, service encounters, and workplace learning within the service sector. However, there has been limited knowledge sharing between these research fields despite the extensive literature available. Additionally, there has been a lack of research on the role of frontline employees in service encounters or workplace learning in retail since around 2000.

There are multiple definitions and understandings of the concept of a "service encounter" in service literature. Surprenant and Solomon's seminal work (1987, p. 87) defines a service encounter as "the dyadic interaction between a customer and a service provider." Initially, the service encounter was seen as a game of people driven by learned behaviors relevant to the situation (i.e., roles) formulated in the organization's service script, a detailed guide for frontline employees to follow during a service encounter. However, since marketing shifted its theoretical focus to a customer perspective on customer value creation around 2000, marketing theory and service research have increasingly expanded the definition of service encounters beyond just a dyadic interaction between a firm and a customer to service encounters as ecosystems (Bowen, 2016). 

The automation of transactions could be one explanation for why customer service has been a focus in organizational education since the 1990s. However, the soft skills associated with customer service, also known as emotional labor skills, are not easily captured or measured through traditional means of assessing knowledge and skills. This has led to traditional service jobs, such as sales assistant, clerk, cashier and customer service, becoming entry-level positions in retail organizations that do not require any specific skills and are characterized by short-term employment and low salaries.

The paper is based on the findings of three separate studies that were conducted using qualitative methods. These methods included online research, online video research (Legewie & Nassauer, 2018) and the ethnographic methods of observation, interview, and researchers’ logbook (O'Reilly, 2012). TPA and concepts from this theory was used as the framework to analyze data material produced between June 2018 and April 2024. The first study aimed at providing a historical and genealogical perspective on organizational sales and service training in retail organizations. For this purpose, online video research was selected as the research method and the public video-sharing YouTube as the data source. The data material selected for analysis comprised 50 instructional videos for cashier work produced between 1917 and 2021 by retail employers, organizations and tech companies (30 training videos, 10 tutorial videos, and 10 screencast videos). Findings from this study were recently published in a special issue on organizational learning in the Journal of Workplace Learning. The second study was centered on digital education for sales and service in retail organizations provided by non-formal education providers. To gain insights into the content, purpose, and instructional methods used in such education, a combination of research methods including interviews, online research, and online video research were chosen. The third study aims to gather insights from salespeople who work in connected stores regarding their sales and service training experiences. The data collection process, which includes ethnographic methods such as observation, work shadowing, field interviews, and logbook keeping, began in January 2022 and is still ongoing.

The findings in this paper suggest that for the past four decades, digital sales and service training in retail organizations have remained largely unchanged While it was found that the connected service encounter comprises two intertwined processes (‘projects’), transactions and customer service, present sales- and service training showed to still model the traditional service encounter. That is, as a game between people with little or no interference from new technologies. Salespeople play a significant role in service encounters, and their selling practice leads to the co-production of service and value. However, in sales and service training, the selling process is often taught out of context and without any interactions with the digital service ecosystem. There is currently no evidence to suggest that the existing conceptualizations of the selling process in organizational sales and service education address the roles and skills required for the connected service encounter. One's identity as a salesperson is shaped by their experiences as a customer, the values and norms of their employer, and the collective customer service provided by the retail organization.

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