research-article

Customer support as a source of usability insight: why users call support after visiting self-service websites

Authors:

Asbjørn Følstad,

Knut Kvale,

Ida Maria HaugstveitAuthors Info & Claims

NordiCHI '14: Proceedings of the 8th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Fun, Fast, Foundational

Pages 167 - 170

https://doi.org/10.1145/2639189.2639232

Published: 26 October 2014 Publication History

Get Access

Abstract

Though customer support is argued to be a useful source of usability insight, how to benefit from customer support in usability evaluation is hardly made the subject of scientific research. In this paper, we present an approach to gather usability insight from users when they call customer support. We also present a case implementation of this approach: an evaluation of a telecom operator's customer website. We find that the proposed approach provides insight in usability problems, technical issues, and issues of strategic character. Though the majority of the website users called customer support because they were obstructed in their attempt to use available self-service support options, a substantial proportion of the users called customer support as a planned part of their task. On the basis of the study findings we present practical implications and suggest future research.

References

[1]

Chilana, P. K., Ko, A. J., Wobbrock, J. O., Grossman, T. and Fitzmaurice, G. Post-deployment usability: a survey of current practices. In Proc. CHI '11, ACM Press (2011), 2243--2246.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[2]

Cockton, G., Lavery, D. and Woolrych, A. Inspection-based evaluations. In The human-computer interaction handbook: fundamentals, evolving technologies and emerging applications (2nd ed.), Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (2008), 1171--1190.

Google Scholar

[3]

Dumas, J. S. and Fox, J. E. Usability testing: Current practice and future directions. In The human-computer interaction handbook: fundamentals, evolving technologies and emerging applications (2nd ed.), Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (2008), 1129--1150.

Google Scholar

[4]

Ezzy, D. Qualitative analysis. Routledge, 2002.

Google Scholar

[5]

Landis, J. R., & Koch, G. G. The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data. Biometrics, 33 (1977), 159--174.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[6]

Mayhew, D. J. and Mantei, M. A basic framework for cost-justifying usability engineering. In Cost-justifying usability, Academic Press (1994), 9--43.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[7]

Shneiderman, B. Designing the user interface: strategies for effective human-computer interaction, Addison-Wesley, 1987.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[8]

Shneiderman, B., Plaisant, C., Cohen, M. and Jacobs, S. Designing the user interface: strategies for effective human-computer interaction (5^th ed.). Pearson, 2013.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[9]

van Kuijk, J., Kanis, H., Christiaans, H. and van Eijk, D. Usability in product development practice: after sales information as feedback. In Proceedings of IASDR '07, 12--17.

Google Scholar

[10]

Vredenburg, K., Mao, J. Y., Smith, P. W. and Carey, T. A survey of user-centered design practice. In Proceedings of CHI '02, ACM Press (2002), 471--478.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

Cited By

View all

Elita Natalia Sugianto Jessica Aurelia Sujangga Delvia NVerdiana Ayustika Agus Cahyo Nugroho (2022)Pengembangan Chatbot “Ciovita” Virtual Assistant Cioccolato Brownie Semarang Dengan Metode WaterfallJournal of Applied Computer Science and Technology10.52158/jacost.v3i2.3483:2(179-185)Online publication date: 31-Dec-2022
https://doi.org/10.52158/jacost.v3i2.348

Index Terms

Customer support as a source of usability insight: why users call support after visiting self-service websites
1. Human-centered computing

Recommendations

Outsourcing customer support: The role of provider customer focus
Abstract
An increasing number of firms are outsourcing customer support to external service providers. This creates a triadic setting in which an outsourcing provider serves end customers on behalf of its clients. While outsourcing presents an opportunity ...
Predicting Customer Satisfaction in Customer Support Conversations in Social Media Using Affective Features
UMAP '16: Proceedings of the 2016 Conference on User Modeling Adaptation and Personalization

Providing customer support through social media channels is gaining popularity. In such a context, predicting customer satisfaction in an early stage of a service conversation is important. Such an analysis can help personalize agent assignment to ...
Enhancing Online Customer Engagement for Zhang Yiyuan Tea Products: An Analysis of Convenience, User-Friendliness, Customer Support, and Security Assurance in the Online Purchase Process
IMMS '23: Proceedings of the 2023 6th International Conference on Information Management and Management Science

This research study investigates the determinants of online customer engagement for Zhang Yiyuan tea products within the e-commerce context. The primary objective is to gain an in-depth understanding of how various factors, namely convenience of online ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

NordiCHI '14: Proceedings of the 8th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Fun, Fast, Foundational

October 2014

361 pages

ISBN:9781450325424

DOI:10.1145/2639189

General Chairs:
Virpi Roto,
Jonna Häkkilä,
Program Chairs:
Kaisa Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila,
Oskar Juhlin,
Publications Chairs:
Thomas Olsson,
Ebba Hvannberg

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

In-Cooperation

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 26 October 2014

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Funding Sources

Norges Forskningsråd

Conference

NordiCHI '14

NordiCHI '14: The 8th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction

October 26 - 30, 2014

Helsinki, Finland

Acceptance Rates

NordiCHI '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 89 of 361 submissions, 25%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 379 of 1,572 submissions, 24%

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

1
Total Citations
View Citations
277
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)19
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)4

Reflects downloads up to 14 Dec 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

Elita Natalia Sugianto Jessica Aurelia Sujangga Delvia NVerdiana Ayustika Agus Cahyo Nugroho (2022)Pengembangan Chatbot “Ciovita” Virtual Assistant Cioccolato Brownie Semarang Dengan Metode WaterfallJournal of Applied Computer Science and Technology10.52158/jacost.v3i2.3483:2(179-185)Online publication date: 31-Dec-2022
https://doi.org/10.52158/jacost.v3i2.348

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

Outsourcing customer support: The role of provider customer focus

Predicting Customer Satisfaction in Customer Support Conversations in Social Media Using Affective Features

Enhancing Online Customer Engagement for Zhang Yiyuan Tea Products: An Analysis of Convenience, User-Friendliness, Customer Support, and Security Assurance in the Online Purchase Process