To wait or not to wait: effect of apologies and explanations on customer call abandonment

ABSTRACT

Research on wait management has almost exclusively focused on customer affective response, trying to mitigate their negative emotions. As such, prior studies appear to be motivated by the assumption that encouraging customers to quit the wait is not an option. Our study challenges this assumption by proposing that during peak hours or for customers who are unlikely to get served within a reasonable time frame, the firm should consider applying tactics to skillfully guide them to quit the wait. We examine the effects of apologies and explanations on customer emotional and behavioral responses to waiting in a telephone queue setting. In two field studies and two lab studies, we find that apologies with a high-control explanation (which indicates that the firm has a high degree of control over the situation) versus a low-control explanation, result in greater attribution of locus to the service provider. In turn, this leads to greater customer call abandonment but, crucially, will not generate additional negative emotions from customers. Our study offers a new research angle by incorporating an operational perspective into customer experience management. Our findings can be applied to help service providers better manage the flow of customer calls while avoiding negative customer sentiments.

摘要

等候管理研究大多致力于减轻顾客的负面情绪，似乎不考虑让其放弃等待这一选项。我们提出必要时商家应考虑有技巧地引导顾客离开。本文研究顾客致电商家等待人工应答时，商家提供的道歉和解释对其情绪与行为反应的影响。我们发现道歉结合可控性高的解释会让顾客把等候原因归咎于商家，因而更可能挂机；但这并不会引发顾客负面情绪。本研究把运营理念应用到顾客体验管理中，帮助商家兼顾顾客情绪的同时优化管理客服中心的电话流量。

KEYWORDS:

• Waiting-time fillers
• apologies
• explanations
• attribution
• controllability
• service queue

关键词:

• 等待时间填充
• 道歉
• 解释
• 归因
• 控制
• 服务排队

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 China Post shares its office with the sub-ministry-level government agency State Post Bureau, which regulates the national postal industry. The customer service number is 11185.

2 Sojump (http://www.wjx.cn) is a professional online survey platform, the Chinese equivalent of the combination of Qualtrics and Mturk, offering services including questionnaire design, data collection, respondents recruitment, custom reporting, and result analysis, etc.

3 Baidu AI Speech (https://intl.cloud.baidu.com/product/speech.html) offers various AI capabilities including speech-to-text, text-to-speech, audio file transcription, etc. In particular, its text-to-speech solution enables developers to transfer text into highly anthropomorphic, smooth, natural and customizable voice.

Additional information

Funding

The research was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 71802201] and Humanities and Social Science Fund of Ministry of Education of China [grant number 20YJA630065.