When customers avoid assistance seeking Assistance seeking avoidance and the effects of chat as an assistance channel

25 June 2019 AT 02:00 P.M.
ESCP – Campus République – Room 4310

Marion SANGLE-FERRIERE,PhD candidate in the PhD programme ESCP, will publicly defend her PhD thesis in Management Sciences.

Jury 

Abstract

The aim of this research is to better understand the reasons why consumers may – or not - request assistance from a service or product provider, and also to understand if and how chat may ease this assistance request. A qualitative exploratory fieldwork led us to identify the perceived threats that are associated with an assistance request. It also highlighted how chat may alleviate these threats. The anonymous nature of chat, however, casts doubts about the interlocutor’s nature (human or virtual), which, in return, mitigates the positive alleviating effects of chat. As the factors explaining assistance avoidance appear to be of attitudinal nature, we then define and measure the construct of “customer propensity to avoid assistance request”. This construct is then empirically tested, to assess the extent to which an assistance request is linked to a customer’s attitude towards assistance. Finally, we offer a typology suggesting that some consumers may be averse to requesting assistance, and may be more willing to do so by chat. Altogether, these results contribute to helping companies to improve their offer of customer assistance, especially by offering chat, thus helping a larger amount of customers to benefit from a full usage of their products and services.