Does the Web Reduce Customer Service Cost? Empirical Evidence from a Call Center
Authors: Kumar, Anuj; Telang, Rahul
Journal: Information Systems Research (2012)
<jats:p>Firms are investing millions to deploy Web-based self-services at their call centers. The rationale for such investment is that the firm's cost of interacting with its customers through the Web-based channel is an order of magnitude cheaper than the assisted channels such as telephony. We conduct a field study at the call center of a prominent U.S. health insurance firm to examine this cost-saving rationale of the Web-based self-service channel. On the one hand, the Web channel may substitute for the telephony channel in some cases. On the other hand, the Web also exposes customers to a vast amount of information about their health policy, claims, and coverage; this information can create uncertainty leading to customers seeking more information and hence making more telephone calls. We designed a quasi-natural experiment in our field setting and used difference-in-difference specifications to show that the Web-based self-service usage leads to a 14% increase in telephone calls. We conduct several robustness checks to show that our specifications are robust to any potential selection of customers in the Web-based self-service usage. We further find that the impact of Web p…