Digitalization has been reshaping professional services across various sectors, with profound implications for delivering care and support services. Given its dramatic global increase, this transformation is particularly pronounced in the field of addiction counseling, a socially significant professional service. As the professional-client relationship is critical in addiction counseling, its evolution in the digital age requires careful consideration. Through a formative, synthetic review drawing on two pertinent strands of scholarship, this paper aims to improve our understanding of the impact of technology on the professional-client relationship. We concretize how technology impacts client relationships by classifying eight concepts derived from the organizational and management literature review. We juxtapose these concepts with the identified critical design features – identified from the addiction counseling literature review – that are essential to maintaining a strong client relationship in this context. An initial framework derived from this systematic juxtaposition offers more fine-grained insights into the opportunities and tensions when professionals use technology in designing constructive client relationships. Importantly, this framework provides a conceptually sound foundation for future research endeavors.
