Too busy to help: Antecedents and outcomes of interactional justice in web-based service encounters

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2013.03.005Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Web-based live-chat support services are one promising and growing in popularity means toward improving customer service.

  • We study the success factors of such services using service marketing and justice lenses of analysis.

  • We apply SEM techniques to data collected from users of live-chat support services of two libraries.

  • The findings suggest that interactional justice is an important success driver, which is diminished by the perceived busyness of the service provider.

  • The findings also suggest that this effect is moderated by the duration of the live-chat session.

  • Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Abstract

Customer service is an important aspect of virtually all organizations. Thus, many try to find ways to improve it. Web-based live-chat support services are one promising means toward this end. However, such services and their success factors have been rarely studied. This study bridges this gap. It builds on justice and service marketing theories, and examines key factors that drive intentions to continue using web-based live-chat support services and to provide positive word-of-mouth. The results suggest that these outcomes are increased through interactional justice perceptions, which are diminished by the perceived busyness of the service provider. It is also suggested that the latter effect is moderated by the duration of the live-chat session; when the session is long the effect is stronger. Data collected from 86 users of a library web-based live-chat service were analyzed with structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques and support this view. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Introduction

Delivering high quality customer service is vital for companies that wish to remain competitive. It can produce a wide range of positive outcomes, such as increased customer loyalty (Fornell, Johnson, Anderson, Cha, & Bryant, 1996), reduced complaining behavior, stronger positive word of mouth, stronger repeat purchase intentions (Meuter, Ostrom, Roundtree, & Bitner, 2000), and increased market share (Suzuki, Tyworth, & Novack, 2001). Thus, many companies allocate significant resources to ensure that their customers receive high quality customer service.

One key means toward this end is the provision of customer support services throughout the life of a product or service; including the pre-purchase stage when a customer identifies his or her requirements, during the actual acquisition of the product or service, throughout the ownership of the product or the receipt of the service, and disposal (Lightner, 2004). Typically, customer support services allow current or potential customers to contact a service representative over the phone or in person, or to employ self-service technologies (e.g., kiosks) in order to inquire about transactions, product uses and features, and to resolve problems (Gebauer, 2007, Meuter et al., 2005).

Recent advances in technology now allow the provisioning of over-the-web live-chat customer support services. These services permit users to seek service-related information from a company via web-based synchronous media (typically chat facilities), and a human service representative who provides answers via the same media (Turel, Connelly, & Fisk, 2013). While many companies (e.g., major banks, airlines and retailers in the United States) have started to offer such services, little is known about what makes these advances successful. Such insights would be valuable because web-based support services are relatively inexpensive to provide, easy to access (Hibbard, Dalton, & Thyfault, 1998), and have the ability to enhance customer satisfaction and brand loyalty (Negash, Ryan, & Igbaria, 2003). Thus, this study seeks to examine some of the key mechanisms through which continued use and positive word of mouth intentions toward web-based live-chat customer support services are developed.

One key factor that has been shown to affect customer service evaluations and behaviors in offline settings is interactional justice (Maxham and Netemeyer, 2002, Patterson et al., 2006). This construct captures people's post-service-encounter perceptions regarding the fairness of the interpersonal treatment and information (politeness, empathy, truthfulness, etc.) they received from the service agent during the service experience (Blodgett, Hill, & Tax, 1997). People learn to expect to be treated in a polite, truthful and empathic manner through previous service experiences (Solomon, Surprenant, Czepiel, & Gutman, 1985). When these expectations are met (i.e., people perceive high interactional justice), they develop positive cognitive, affective, and behavioral reactions toward the source of justice (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001). Using this fairness theory perspective (Folger & Cropanzano, 2001) as applied to service research (Martinez-Tur, Peiro, Ramos, & Moliner, 2006) we argue that the interactional justice perceptions of users of a web-based customer support service increase their continuance and positive word of mouth intentions.

Given the potential importance of interactional justice in web-based service encounters, it is also desirable to validate some of its antecedents. Interactional justice perceptions are typically formed, in part, on the basis of structural attributes of the service encounter and the cues they provide (Rupp & Spencer, 2006). Two such structural attributes that are presumably apparent in live-chat service encounters include the perceived busyness of the service provider; that is, the belief that he or she is busy with other users or tasks, and the session length; i.e., the duration of the service encounter. Perceived busyness in particular is a feature, which is somewhat unique to this context, because as opposed to other synchronous customer support settings in which the service receiver has vocal and facial cues, these are not apparent in text-based live-chat service encounters. Thus, in web-based service encounters customers may feel, rightly or wrongly, that the service provider is busy with other users or tasks (e.g., he or she manages multiple sessions simultaneously).

Based on interactional justice theories (Blodgett et al., 1997), we first contend that the perceived busyness of the service provider may, in some cases be interpreted as disrespectfulness and apathy toward user needs, and that it should therefore decrease users’ interactional justice assessments of these services. We then argue that this effect is moderated by the session length, such that the abovementioned negative effect is strengthened when the session becomes longer. When the service provider seems to be busy with other tasks and the session becomes unnecessarily long, users are exposed to more and longer episodes of treatment that they perceive to be disrespectful, which can further reduce interactional justice perceptions (Carr, 2007). Thus, the perceived busyness of the service provider and its interaction with the length of the service encounter can indirectly reduce positive intentions toward web-based support services.

The proposed model is tested and validated with SEM techniques applied to data collected from 86 users of library web-based live-chat services. The findings make several contributions. First, we consider novel antecedents of interactional justice. Second, we examine justice perceptions and their outcomes in web-based customer support services context. In such situations it is not clear whether people feel rudely treated even though they cannot see facial expressions or hear tone of voice; and how they use these judgments for determining their future behaviors. Justice perceptions effects have been studied primarily in organizational face-to-face situations (Colquitt, LePine, Piccolo, Zapata, & Rich, 2012), and the extension of this literature to web-based service contexts is therefore warranted. This viewpoint has also several practical implications which are discussed.

Section snippets

Theoretical background

The increased use of technology for service delivery has sparked interest in understanding technology's role in customizing service offerings (R.T. Cenfetelli, Benbasat, & Al-Natour, 2008) and satisfying customers (Bitner, Brown, & Meuter, 2000). Extant research in this domain has examined factors affecting satisfaction with electronic service encounters (e.g., Fassnacht and Koese, 2006, Holloway and Beatty, 2008), variables influencing the decision to use self-service technologies over other

Hypotheses

In face-to-face service encounters, customers can, and often do, assess various aspects of the service, such as whether they get the service representative's full attention, and whether he or she seems to care about their situation (Goodwin and Gremler, 1996, Mohr and Bitner, 1991, Steinmetz and Tabenkin, 2001). Such assessments may not be so obvious in the case of web-based services given the relatively lean-medium they rely on for communications (Daft & Lengel, 1986). As a result, users of

Method

This study focused on the live-chat services provided by the libraries of two public and fairly large (about 24 and 36 thousand students), North American universities. These services allowed users (students, faculty, and members of the community) to initiate and participate in instant-messaging sessions via a web-based live-chat platform with a trained librarian (the service provider). In these sessions, the users typically asked for help in finding library materials, citing published works

Preliminary analyses

Several analyses were performed before estimating the research model. First, the sample size in this study was relatively small. We thus wanted to ensure it is viable for SEM analyses. Such analyses with sample sizes over 50 tends to generate reasonably high rates of proper solutions with acceptably low non-convergence rates (Fan, Thompson, & Wang, 1999). Although some have suggested that SEM on small-sample models may slightly over-estimate fit indices and yield low power to reject the null

Discussion

Employees in customer service roles are, by necessity, busy. They typically deal with high volumes of comments and questions, and are evaluated on the basis of how many calls they can “close” per hour. In order to cope with this high volume, many organizations have instituted alternative ways to deal with customers, such as instant messaging or “live chat” customer service. The implications of the use of this technology, however, have yet to be examined empirically. This study has made

Limitations

Despite the contributions of this research, three limitations should be acknowledged. First, this study was based on a specific type of customer support service, namely instant-messaging-based library reference services as offered in a North American context. Future studies should examine other types of e-services catering to different populations, in order to extend the generalizability of our findings. Second, the model examined in this study is not conclusive. Future research can extend it

Conclusion

Providing good customer service has been a key challenge for many companies. While technology can help companies in this regard, it can also present new challenges. This study has demonstrated that when companies use web-based live-chat support services, the perceived busyness of the service provider and the perceived duration of the service encounter interact and reduce perceptions of interactional fairness. These factors therefore diminish continued use and positive word-of-mouth intentions.

Ofir Turel is a professor of Information Systems and Decision Sciences at the College of Business and Economics, California State University, Fullerton. He holds a B.Sc. in industrial engineering, an M.B.A. in technology management, and a Ph.D. in management information systems. Before joining academia, he held senior positions in the information technology and telecommunications industries. His research interests include a broad range of behavioral and managerial issues in various information

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    Ofir Turel is a professor of Information Systems and Decision Sciences at the College of Business and Economics, California State University, Fullerton. He holds a B.Sc. in industrial engineering, an M.B.A. in technology management, and a Ph.D. in management information systems. Before joining academia, he held senior positions in the information technology and telecommunications industries. His research interests include a broad range of behavioral and managerial issues in various information systems contexts. His work has received several national and international awards, and has been presented in many conferences. He has published over 40 articles in journals such as MIS Quarterly, Journal of Management Information Systems, European Journal of Information Systems, Communications of the ACM, Information & Management, Journal of Information Systems, Behavior & Information Technology, Telecommunications Policy, Group Decision and Negotiation, and Communications in Statistics.

    Catherine E. Connelly is a Canada Research Chair (Tier II) and associate professor of organizational behavior at the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University. Her research deals primarily with the attitudes and behaviors of workers who have “non-standard” employment arrangements (e.g., mobile workers, contractors, temporary workers). Her research has appeared in several journals, including the Journal of Applied Psychology, the Journal of Management, the Journal of Organizational Behavior, the Journal of Management Information Systems, the Journal of Vocational Behavior, Information & Management, and IEEE Transactions of Engineering Management. She is an associate editor of Human Relations and the Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences.

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