Self service technologies: Eliminating pain points of traditional call centers

Traditional call centers have become one of the primary means for providing customer support. Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) offer personalized attention to each customer via the telephone as the CSR interfaces with technology and customers to resolve customers' requests. Because call centers are expensive, labor intensive, and produce latency during periods of high call volume, businesses utilize web-based Self Service Technologies (SSTs) to minimize costs, provide readily available resources as needed, and reduce latency while simultaneously serving multiple customers. However, web-based SSTs have their own share of challenges which can impede service quality. To better understand the painful front stage experiences attributed to traditional call centers, we conduct content analysis of interactions between CSRs and customers. Results provide a design framework for web-based customer support SSTs that eliminate the pain points attributed to traditional call centers and address the shortcoming of web-based SSTs. Copyright 2009 ACM.