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It Takes Just 120 Seconds: Predicting Satisfaction in Technical Support Calls
Author(s) -
Hall Judith A.,
Verghis Phil,
Stockton William,
Goh Jin X.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
psychology and marketing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.035
H-Index - 116
eISSN - 1520-6793
pISSN - 0742-6046
DOI - 10.1002/mar.20711
Subject(s) - psychology , proxy (statistics) , desk , applied psychology , social psychology , style (visual arts) , computer science , machine learning , history , operating system , archaeology
This study investigated whether information gleaned from the first two minutes of technical support telephone conversations could predict the callers’ satisfaction with the technical support person. The first two minutes of 84 calls from employees of a company to their help desk (47 technical support persons) were measured using (1) new participants who listened to or read the conversations and rated their impressions of the technical support person and their satisfaction while playing the caller role (proxy callers), and (2) other raters who rated the caller and aspects of the interaction as a whole. A word count software program (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, LIWC) was also used to examine the support persons’ communication style. Proxy callers’ satisfaction, their ratings of the support persons’ behavior (particularly on items indicative of a positive, caller‐centered behavior style), and the support persons’ use of the first person singular category of the LIWC were all significant predictors of the original callers’ satisfaction. These findings have implications for companies’ selection and training of customer support employees.