Customer Service Interactions Research Articles

Enhancing customer satisfaction with chatbots: the influence of anthropomorphic communication styles and anthropomorphised roles

PurposeChatbots are increasingly used in online retail settings and are becoming a powerful tool for brands to engage customers. However, consumers’ satisfaction with these chatbots is mixed. Thus, this paper aims to investigate how using a social- versus task-oriented anthropomorphic communication style can improve customer satisfaction.Design/methodology/approachThe authors explore the link between the anthropomorphic communication style use and customer perceptions/customer satisfaction in online customer service interactions. Two experiment scenarios were developed to test these links.FindingsOverall, using a social-oriented communication style boosts customer satisfaction. Warmth perception of the chatbot mediates this effect, while chatbot’s anthropomorphised role (servant versus partner) moderates this effect.Originality/valueThis paper enriches the bilateral communication literature by extending the investigation on communication style effects to chatbot service interactions and revealing the psychological process driving the impacts. It also adds to the existing literature on chatbots as a customer service and contributes to the prominent topic examining how consumers react to artificial intelligence that is used to establish and maintain a relationship with them. Additionally, the authors also make contribution to the warmth and competence literature by demonstrating that customers can interpret social cues in chatbot service interactions mainly based on the warmth dimension. Thus, the authors further add to the growing chatbot humanness perception literature and respond to the calls for investigating more anthropomorphic design cues to enhance chatbot humanness. Finally, the authors also provide a way to help reconcile seemingly conflicting prior findings.

The Role and Necessity of Change Management in Organizations։ Investing CRM as an Effective System to Manage Customer Relations

This paper summarizes the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on the issue of change management characteristics in organizations. The main purpose of the research is to find out and discuss the role of change management in organizations, the main change management models, the benefits of investing CRM in a banking system that will change the way of work. A systematization of literary sources on the issue of change management presents some models steps of change management in organization. It indicates the importance of change management in today’s fast-moving world. Investigation of the topic proves that change management may help organizations become more effective customer-oriented. Analysis in the paper is carried out in the following logical sequence: literature review shows some examples of international experience of the discussed topic; also, the experience of CRM investing is discussed in one of the Armenian banks. Methodological tools of the research methods were analysis and synthesis, surveys. The paper presents the results of an empirical study, which shows that there are some transactions for which people prefer going to the bank. Certain services tend to go online, for example, to request account information or transfer money between accounts. The trend is that customers are moving more and more to online platforms. It was due to the introduction of the latest IT technologies in the banking system; also, during Covid-19, people preferred to do transactions online. The results show that it is necessary to use CRM tools to manage customer relationships throughout a customer life cycle, including marketing, sales, digital marketing, and customer service interactions. We suggest using CRM tools in banks to identify customers’ needs as much as possible to build a stable and long-lasting bank-customer relationship. The results of the research can be helpful for banks to improve their experience, invest in CRM systems and do better change management.

Blame the Bot: Anthropomorphism and Anger in Customer–Chatbot Interactions

Chatbots have become common in digital customer service contexts across many industries. While many companies choose to humanize their customer service chatbots (e.g., giving them names and avatars), little is known about how anthropomorphism influences customer responses to chatbots in service settings. Across five studies, including an analysis of a large real-world data set from an international telecommunications company and four experiments, the authors find that when customers enter a chatbot-led service interaction in an angry emotional state, chatbot anthropomorphism has a negative effect on customer satisfaction, overall firm evaluation, and subsequent purchase intentions. However, this is not the case for customers in nonangry emotional states. The authors uncover the underlying mechanism driving this negative effect (expectancy violations caused by inflated pre-encounter expectations of chatbot efficacy) and offer practical implications for managers. These findings suggest that it is important to both carefully design chatbots and consider the emotional context in which they are used, particularly in customer service interactions that involve resolving problems or handling complaints.

The Effect of Social Media Marketing on Sales Growth of Small and Medium Enterprises in the Fashion Industry in Nairobi County, Kenya

Small and medium enterprises in the various sectors of the Kenyan economy have been adopting social media marketing to steer their marketing objectives. The fashion enterprises have not been left behind in adopting and engaging their customers through the social media marketing channels. The traditional channels of marketing that include television, radio and billboard marketing are perceived to be more expensive compared to social media marketing channels, and thus has led to more enterprises switching to social media marketing. However, the local enterprises in the fashion industry still face stiff competition from cheap imported second-hand fashion products from other countries. The local fashion designers also face stiff competition from well-established global fashion brands that have penetrated the Kenyan market. High cost of capital and limited access to financing has also been a major challenge for the fashion enterprises and has led to many of them lacking sufficient resources to implement their marketing objectives. Furthermore, the fashion industry is very dynamic and there exists the challenge posed by the ever-changing consumer preferences in relation to the fashion trends. Lack of market readiness has led to poor performance of the fashion enterprises. The study sought to establish the effect of social media marketing on sales growth of small and medium enterprises in the fashion industry in Nairobi County. The study was anchored on two theories that include Technology Acceptance Model and Social Network Theory that related to the variables under study. The research used descriptive cross-sectional design with the target population comprising of the 210 fashion SMEs in Nairobi County dealing in fashion accessories, bodywear and footwear. The study used a census technique, where all the 210 listed fashion enterprises were studied. Primary data was collected through structured questionnaires. Data analysis was done using the Statistical Package for Social Science Software (S.P.S.S) version 25. Regression analysis was performed to test the hypotheses of the study. The study established that Social media marketing had a positive significant effect on sales growth of small and medium enterprises in the fashion industry in Nairobi County. The study recommends that the fashion enterprises adopt effective social media marketing tools to steer their marketing campaigns and improve sales performance. Furthermore, the marketing strategies adopted should be optimized and enhanced to improve customer service and customer interaction with the fashion enterprises. Through social media adoption, the enterprises ought to share relevant and up-to-date content on their social media platforms to target their customers so as to accrue its benefits that include low costs of adoption and improved interaction between the customers and the fashion enterprises.

Customer Experience: Extracting Topics From Tweets

The ubiquity of social media platforms facilitates free flow of online chatter related to customer experience. Twitter is a prominent social media platform for sharing experiences, and e-retail firms are rapidly emerging as the preferred shopping destination. This study explores customers’ online shopping experience tweets. Customers tweet about their online shopping experience based on moments of truth shaped by encounters across different touchpoints. We aggregate 25,173 such tweets related to six e-retailers tweeted over a 5-year period. Grounded on agency theory, we extract the topics underlying these customer experience tweets using unsupervised latent Dirichlet allocation. The output reveals five topics which manifest into customer experience tweets related to online shopping—ordering, customer service interaction, entertainment, service outcome failure, and service process failure. Topics extracted are validated through inter-rater agreement with human experts. The study, thus, derives topics from tweets about e-retail customer experience and thereby facilitates prioritization of decision-making pertaining to critical service encounter touchpoints.

The Presenter’s Paradox in customer service interactions

This study examines the Presenter’s Paradox in the context of customer–server interactions. Our findings from four studies suggest that, in response to service predicaments, restaurant servers frequently exhibit two tendencies that are misaligned with the preferences of their customers: they offer uninformative explanations to avoid revealing information that conveys an unfavorable impression, and they manage impressions on behalf of coworkers that cause service predicaments. These efforts lead to behaviors that do not satisfy the information needs of customers and result in less favorable financial outcomes (e.g., lower tips) for servers. This study contributes to the knowledge on impression management and customer service interactions.

Managing the human–chatbot divide: how service scripts influence service experience

PurposeBrands are increasingly considering the use of chatbots to supplement, or even replace, humans in service interactions. Like humans, chatbots can follow certain service scripts in their encounters, which can subsequently determine the customer experience. Service scripts are verbal prescriptions that seek to standardize customer service interactions. However, while the role of service scripts is well documented, despite the increasing use of chatbots as a service mechanism, less is known about the effect, on consumers, of different service scripts presented during chatbot service encounters.Design/methodology/approachAn experimental scenario was developed to test the research hypotheses. Respondents were randomly allocated to scenarios representing a 2 (service interaction: human, chatbot) × 2 (service script: education, entertainment) design. A total of 262 US consumers constituted the final sample for the study.FindingsThe findings indicate that when employing an education script, a significant positive effect occurs for human service agents (compared to chatbots) in terms of both satisfaction and purchase intention. These effects are fully mediated by emotion and rapport, showing that the bonds developed through the close proximity to a human service agent elicit emotion and develop rapport, which in turn influence service outcomes. However, this result is present only when an educational script is used.OriginalityThis paper contributes to the emerging service marketing literature on the use of digital services, in particular chatbots, in service interactions. We show that differences occur in key outcomes dependent on the type of service script employed (education or entertainment). For managers, this study indicates that chatbot interactions can be tailored (in script delivered) in order to maximize emotion and rapport and subsequently consumer purchase intention and satisfaction.

A Combined Method of r-NPS and t-NPS Evaluations for Identification of Negative Triggers of Detractors’ Experience

User experience has garnered increasing interest from researchers in the field of sustainable human–computer interaction (HCI) design. One of the key pillars to building sustainable user experience for digital applications is to be able to identify powerful triggers of detracting behavior and especially those of radical detraction. In the past, traditional methods of user experience analysis have often led to the assumption that pragmatic aspects constitute the priority issues for user experience improvement given the prevalence of these aspects in user feedback surveys. However, our econometric analysis based on net promoter score (NPS) survey results defeats this assumption and reveals that the most powerful degraders of the detractors’ experience are in fact the emotive aspects of experience such as transparency of transactions and customer service interaction. Based on our analysis, we arrive at several insights regarding the building of a sustainable HCI strategy. First, hedonic aspects of user experience are the most significant determinants of the degree of user detraction among the detractors. Second, membership cannot be taken for granted as a token of customer loyalty. Building on the theoretical framework of Hassenzahl, Haines-Gadd, and others, we generate new evidence for the importance of servicing hedonic aspects of user experience for digital applications businesses to form a sustainable customer relation and product strategy.

Delightful tourism experiences: A cognitive or affective matter?

There are many times that we, as tourist consumers, have been more than satisfied. We have been delighted with the product or service received. However, do we know the factors which affect our delight as customers? Are they affective or cognitive factors? The objective of this article is to empirically identify delighted consumers and the factors associated with these memorable tourist experiences when the threshold of satisfaction is exceeded. To this end, the authors used structural equation modelling to test a model based on a sample of 400 tourists obtained through a survey.The findings revealed that a consumer's positive affective state of delight seems to be affected largely by cognitive-affective antecedents. Specifically, the cognitive dimension encompasses three main factors of the tourist service: the customer-service interaction, the staff and the availability of the service. However, the tourist's happiness, as the main affective dimension, is also emphasised.

Aggression in Service Interactions: New Directions in Customer Mistreatment

Customer service interactions often go awry when customers interact with frontline employees in an uncivil, abusive and aggressive manner a phenomenon commonly referred to as customer mistreatment....

Emotion regulation in the context of customer mistreatment and felt affect: An event-based profile approach.

Variable-centered views of emotional labor suggest that high customer incivility and employee-felt negative affect should co-occur with high employee emotion regulation. Similarly, low customer incivility and employee positive affect should be accompanied by low emotion regulation. We theorize that these theory-based configurations of emotional labor variables represent only a subset of the possible ways that emotional labor events unfold. We propose that there are distinct subpopulations of emotional labor events, some of which conform to this standard view of emotional labor and some of which deviate from this model and that these distinct configurations suggest different underlying theoretical processes with implications for employee well-being. To investigate these ideas, we adopt an event-centered view (i.e., event-level profiles) that seeks to identify distinct configurations of emotional labor events. In a sample of 246 call center employees who provided ratings of 7,331 customer service interactions, results from multilevel latent profile analysis (MLPA) revealed 8 distinct event-level profiles, some of which align with variable-centered approaches and some of which suggest new ways to think about such events. We then linked these profiles to the event-level well-being outcomes of emotional exhaustion and psychological vitality, showing both longitudinal and concurrent effects. Finally, supplemental analyses detailed how this event-level profile approach differed from standard variable-centered analyses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Data Privacy and Academic Libraries: Non-PII, PII, and Librarians’ Reflections (Part 1)

In this editorial, we discuss the benefits and challenges of working with library data that contains non-Personally Identifiable Information. Despite not containing identifiable information, non-PII data can still be analyzed and used to inform decision making. We are presently using several non-PII data points to inform decision-making in our library: Gate Count, Book Checkouts, Customer Searches, Search Terms Reports, Article and Downloads, Customer Service Interactions, and One Question Surveys. While non-PII data can inform decision-making in libraries, we have found this type of data to be limited in the ways we outline in this editorial.

Modeling and Computational Characterization of Twitter Customer Service Conversations

Given the increasing popularity of customer service dialogue on Twitter, analysis of conversation data is essential to understanding trends in customer and agent behavior for the purpose of automating customer service interactions. In this work, we develop a novel taxonomy of fine-grained “dialogue acts” frequently observed in customer service, showcasing acts that are more suited to the domain than the more generic existing taxonomies. Using a sequential SVM-HMM model, we model conversation flow, predicting the dialogue act of a given turn in real time, and showcase this using our “PredDial” portal. We characterize differences between customer and agent behavior in Twitter customer service conversations and investigate the effect of testing our system on different customer service industries. Finally, we use a data-driven approach to predict important conversation outcomes: customer satisfaction, customer frustration, and overall problem resolution. We show that the type and location of certain dialogue acts in a conversation have a significant effect on the probability of desirable and undesirable outcomes and present actionable rules based on our findings. We explore the correlations between different dialogue acts and the outcome of the conversations in detail using an actionable-rule discovery task by leveraging a state-of-the-art sequential rule mining algorithm while modeling a set of conversations as a set of sequences. The patterns and rules we derive can be used as guidelines for outcome-driven automated customer service platforms.

Exploring the Role of Service Delivery in Remarkable Tourism Experiences

The purpose of the article is to analyze through a service-experience framework the consequences and contingency factors of Service Delivery (SD) in Remarkable Tourism Experiences (RTE) and explore to what extent these factors interact to evoke delight behaviors in customers. The proposal was validated with empirical data from 284 tourists collected through survey method on remarkable experiences in hotels and restaurants. Both an exploratory and a confirmatory analysis were developed using structural equation modeling (SEM). The result highlights to what extent SD components identified (service staff, service availability, and customer service interaction) affect RTE and aid to evoke CD in tourists with high-quality memories. The service-experience model goes beyond the frontline employees with a service-oriented perspective to better understand the emerging factors that provide happiness in customers. The organizational staff is the most important component influencing a customer’s happiness and love feelings. The empirical findings support a model and measurement scale that allows analysis of the impact of SD component statements about customer delight (CD). The study shows the antecedents and interactions among SD emergent factors in RTE, specifically regarding CD behavior. The model proposed in this study links SD components and basic emotions and has important practical implications.

Navigating the Future of Work: Ratings, Algorithms, and Digital Platforms

Continued advances in technology have spurred a vociferous debate about how technology impacts, and is impacted by, work and organizations. While researchers have begun to estimate the economic impact of these changes, sorely lacking amidst this discussion is empirical analysis of how the continued shift from stable, direct employment to contingent, market-mediated forms of employment is impacting how people work and organizational processes unfold. In this symposium, we present three empirical studies and one conceptual framework to offer new ways of thinking and ignite discussions on some of the opportunities and challenges central to the debate on the future of work. We focus on two major themes. First, we explore how the rapid proliferation of algorithmic management, namely performance evaluations or ratings, impact career trajectories, customer service interactions, and sensemaking within digital work environment. Second, we turn to the evaluation of new ideas, exploring how the adoption of digital platforms shapes how innovations are assessed and implemented in organizations. We intend for this symposium to spark a continuing discussion about how workers, technology, and organizations navigate the emerging changes that are becoming increasingly prevalent in our economy and society. Career Growth in Online Gig Labor Markets: A New Path Forward Presenter: Kimberly K. Merriman; U. of Massachusetts, Lowell Who Made the Stars?: Ratings Construction and Consequence in Platform-Mediated Labor Markets Presenter: Lindsey Cameron; U. of Michigan Algorithmic Fluidity: Sensemaking in Online Labor Markets Presenter: Hatim A. Rahman; Stanford U. Opening Up the Innovation Process Within the Firm Through a Digital Platform Presenter: Tristan L. Botelho; Yale School of Management

Young and Recognized in Service Interaction? Re-positioning Youth and Adulthood with Performance Tactics and Strategic Laughter

Young consumers hold an iconic position in post-industrial cultures. In spite of youth idealization in consumer culture, we know little of how youth is situated in everyday interactions in service culture. In our study, we focus on age-related power structures in service encounters. We argue that customer service interaction is built on the norm of an adult order; that is, to achieve an appreciated position as a customer, young people are required to act like ‘middle-aged’ consumers. To gain recognition, young consumers use resistance tactics: They create co-performing teams together with adults and modify their own performance towards adulthood by masking signs of youth. The findings suggest that young people may also resist the dominant adult order; laughter and smiling express a strategy that re-positions adults into a less powerful position in the service environment. The study shows that young and adult categories in service interaction are constantly under re-negotiation.

Insights into emotional contagion and its effects at the hotel front desk

PurposeThis paper aims to draw attention to the need for a nuanced view of the emotional contagion framework. It proposes and empirically tests a refined model of emotional contagion and its effects in the hotel sector by focusing on the front-desk service encounter interactions.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from three separate groups of paired informants: receptionists, hotel customers and interaction observers. The sample included 573 full customer service interactions in 47 hotels in Catalonia. The model was tested with structural equation modelling.FindingsEmotional contagion has specific mechanisms at the hotel front-desk. No relationship was found between receptionists’ inner mood and their outwardly displayed emotions. Yet, receptionists’ displayed emotions enhance customer mood, and, largely, customer satisfaction. Ultimately, this affects customer behavioural intentions. It was also discovered that guests are able to clearly distinguish between their satisfaction with the specific service encounter at the front desk and the overall satisfaction with the hotel stay. The positive effects of employees’ displayed emotions are of particular importance in lower-star hotels and are less important at the high end. Perceived training opportunities have a positive effect on customer satisfaction and improve the employee-displayed emotion.Research limitations/implicationsResearchers should examine employee outcomes that are more stable than mood, but may enhance or be related to the effective display of emotions at the front desk, such as employee satisfaction and commitment. In general, emotions and behaviours of employees and consumers should be further examined in other services across the hospitality industry, in different cultural contexts and in terms of their impact on company performance. Researchers should heed the precise type of mechanism that takes place in each service context.Practical implicationsThe hotel management should focus their efforts on ensuring positive emotional performance, regardless of employees’ inner mood. Managers should carefully interpret differentiated results according to whether they have been drawn from overall satisfaction or customer service interaction surveys. The training provision is of particular importance in lower-star hotels, where customer outcomes depend more on employee-displayed emotion.Originality/valueThis study empirically corroborates that customer outcomes of front-desk services are linked to receptionists’ displayed emotions, and not to employees’ feelings. Onsite data collection, multiple-informant approach, paired dyads and structural equation modelling hold a great potential for study designs that seek insights into interpersonal phenomena in hospitality services research.

An exploration of logistics-related customer service provision on Twitter

Purpose – The success of e-retailers is intrinsically linked to the effectiveness of their logistics processes which, inevitably, involve third party service providers. As the most tangible representative of the e-retailers it is inevitable that customers expect the e-retailer to resolve delivery queries, including on social media platforms. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of e-retailers’ logistics-related customer service interactions on Twitter with a view towards identifying effective and ineffective social media customer service strategies. Design/methodology/approach – The design and public nature of Twitter encourages organic conversations between e-retailers and customers as well as between customers and other customers. The methodology applied here accounts for this by collecting and analysing interactions within and as part of conversations, not as independent observations. In total, 203,349 tweets were collected from 22 of the most popular e-retailers. A random sample of 5,000 logistics-related conversations (16,998 tweets) is used for the analysis presented here and forms a foundation for future research. Findings – Conversations are initiated by customers on the basis of 24 event triggers which can be categorised as occurring either before or after an order is delivered. These can be general queries or related to a specific order or delivery issue. The paper identifies a number of significant findings such as the extent to which e-retailers and logistics providers redirect customers to other channels to resolve queries, ignoring the implicit preference by customers to use Twitter to resolve their problem. Similarly, the lack of interactions between e-retailers and their logistics providers within the Twitter platform to help resolve customer queries results in ineffective customer service. Practical implications – The study identifies the way in which e-retailers can substantially improve the effectiveness of the customer service they provide on Twitter by ensuring that customer queries can be resolved within the platform and by working with their logistics partners to do the same. This is critical since problems may be directed to the e-retailer or the logistics provider but both companies jointly suffer the consequences of poor customer service. Originality/value – The study examines a hitherto underexplored aspect of retail logistics – the social media-based customer service activities of e-retailers. Methodologically, the study is rooted in the acknowledgement that interactions on Twitter form conversations and analyses should take this into account. This is a distinctly different approach from existing Twitter-related studies which conduct an automated sentiment analysis of tweets. This approach reveals a rich picture of interactions and, importantly, identifies where conversations between e-retailers begin, how they develop and how they conclude.

Contact centres: how to escape the games of ‘Guess Who?’

Can you confirm your postcode? What's your mother's maiden name? What are the first, fourth and fifty-fourth letters of your secret password? In the face of such an onslaught of security questions – the logical consequence of password-based authentication – customers are forced to rack their brains for the right answers and it is easy for frustrations to mount. Consumers are getting increasingly annoyed about this style of authentication process, which has become more like a long game of ‘Guess Who?’ than a customer service interaction.

Call centre interaction: A case of sanctioned face attack?

In this paper, we investigate a sub-corpus of call centre interactions building on and extending the work of Jagodziński (2013) and Archer (2008, 2011a,b). Our aim is to show (i) how the institution's tacit acceptance of impoliteness and verbal aggression, on the part of callers, can lead to a form of institutional sanctioning, (ii) how the sting of impoliteness/verbal aggression is neutralised for some agents, in the course of conflictive customer service interactions – but not all, and (iii) possible reasons for this (non)-neutralisation. Our goal is to provide real-life evidence of: how impoliteness and/or verbal aggression are performed in the call centre, the extent to which they are mutually related, and how they link with the notion of instrumentality. In this way we present our own understanding of concepts which, although they have been used in im/politeness research for some time, are still relatively under-researched in real-world contexts such as the call centre.