ABSTRACT
Providing good customer service is crucial to many commercial organizations.
There are different means through which the service can be provided, such as Ecommerce,
call centres or face-to-face. Although some service is provided through
electronic or telephone-based interaction, it is common that the service is provided
through human agents. In addition, many customer service interactions also involve a
computer, for example, an information system where a travel agent finds suitable
flights. This thesis seeks to understand the three channels of customer service
interactions between the agent, customer and computer: Customer-Agent-Computer
Interaction (CACI).
A set of ethnographic studies were conducted at call centres to gain an initial
understanding of CACI and to investigate the customer-computer channel. The
findings revealed that CACI is more complicated than traditional CHI, because there
is a second person, the customer, involved in the interaction. For example, the agent
provides a lot of feedback about the computer to the customer, such as, I am waiting
for the computer . Laboratory experiments were conducted to investigate the customer-computer
channel by adding non-verbal auditory feedback about the computer directly to the
customers. The findings showed only a small insignificant difference in task
completion time and subjective satisfaction. There were indications that there was an
improvement in flow of communication.
Experiments were conducted to investigate how the two humans interact over
two different communication modes: face-to-face and telephone. Findings showed
that there was a significantly shorter task completion time via telephone. There was
also a difference in style of communication, with face-to-face having more single
activities, such as, talking only, while in the telephone condition there were more dual
activities, for instance talking while also searching. There was only a small difference
in subjective satisfaction.
To investigate if the findings from the laboratory experiment also held in a
real situation and to identify potential improvement areas, a series of studies were
conducted: observations and interviews at multiple travel agencies, one focus group and a proof of concept study at one travel agency. The findings confirmed the results
from the laboratory experiments. A number of potential interface improvements were
also identified, such as, a history mechanism and sharing part of the computer screen
with the customer at the agent's discretion.
The results from the work in this thesis suggest that telephone interaction,
although containing fewer cues, is not necessarily an impoverished mode of
communication. Telephone interaction is less time consuming and more task-focused.
Further, adding non-verbal auditory feedback did not enhance the interaction. The
findings also suggest that customer service CACI is inherently different in nature and
that there are additional complications with traditional CHI issues.
