Consumer Engagement Through Live Customer Service: An Abstract

Abstract

As today’s e-commerce environment becomes increasingly competitive, there is an inevitable trend for marketers to employ strategies of providing better online shopping experiences to consumers. One of the strategies is to embed live customer service platforms into e-commerce websites. Live help service is distinguished from other online consumer support functions in that consumers interact directly with human or computerized customer service representatives using an online medium (Aberg and Shahmehri 2003). This study aims to shed light on how live customer service provides online shoppers with greater narrative engagement on e-commerce websites. Moreover, we explore individual difference in locus of control (LOC) (Potosky and Bobko 2001; Griswold 1983), which moderates the effect of control on engagement. Through an online experiment, this study examines the relationship between control over information received during live chatting and consumer narrative engagement. A total of 371 college students were recruited as study participants. The results show that when having the chance to choose what types of information to get, online consumers will be more engaged in the interactions with live sales agents. Furthermore, locus of control plays an influential role in aspects of online shopping. Customers with high internal locus of control generally feel highly engaged in chatting with live sales agents, regardless of the availability to choose information type. On the contrary, external LOC consumers will find it hard to concentrate on the conversations with live agents if they don’t get to choose the topic. The study has three major contributions. First, this study supports Busselle and Bilandzic’s (2009) emphasis on the importance of how information is communicated. Our findings indicate that same set of information generates different feelings for consumers when the ways of information delivery are different. Second, the analysis further contributes to the literature on digital consumer experience by investigating narrative engagement as one unique aspect of it. Control over information received from online interaction is identified as an important influencer of consumer engagement. Third, it deepens the understanding of digital communication through the less examined role of live customer service. Our findings demonstrate that merely pushing information through live customer service might upset a certain group of online shoppers, in our case, external LOC consumers. We suggest giving autonomy for consumers to decide on live chat topics. Practically, our research helps marketers and e-commerce brands better understand and utilize live help service as a new technological tool.