Live-chat agent assignments to heterogeneous e-customers under imperfect classification

Abstract

Many e-commerce firms provide live-chat capability on their Web sites to promote product sales and to offer customer support. With increasing traffic on e-commerce Web sites, providing such live-chat services requires a good allocation of service resources to serve the customers. When resources are limited, firms may consider employing priority-processing and reserving resources for high-value customers. In this article, we model a reserve-based priority-processing policy for e-commerce systems that have imperfect customer classification. Two policy decisions considered in the model are: (1) the number of agents exclusively reserved for highvalue customers, and (2) the configuration of the classification system. We derive explicit expressions for average waiting times of high-value and low-value customer classes and define a total waiting cost function. Through numerical analysis, we study the impact of these two policy decisions on average waiting times and total waiting costs. Our analysis finds that reserving agents for high-value customers may have negative consequences for such customers under imperfect classification. Further, we study the interaction between the two policy decisions and discuss how one decision should be modified with respect to a change in the other one in order to keep the waiting costs minimized.

Do cognitive and affective expressions matter in purchase conversion? A live chat perspective

“…In terms of contribution to the live chat literature, this research advances knowledge on the effective use of live chat to induce purchase conversion with our proposed DCM. Technology is an enabler (Goes et al, ; Qiu & Benbasat, ) and may not necessarily lead to the desired commercial outcomes. The use of communication tools influences people's behavior.…”

“…Especially, with the advancement of artificial intelligence, chatbots (also known as smart bots, IM bots, or artificial conversational entity) are replacing human representatives to chat with customers in many business cases (Ho, Hancock, & Miner, ). Chat, which is technically known as live chat , is a real‐time, one‐on‐one, computer‐mediated communication (CMC) tool used to support the dialog between a shopper and a retailer (Goes, Ilk, Yue, & Zhao, ). As a commercial CMC tool, live chat provides a means for retailers to improve their goals of converting shoppers to buyers through improved information exchange.…”

Understanding the Antecedents and Consequences of Live Chat Use in Electronic Markets

“…Employing this tool allows e-commerce websites to mimic the physical store shopping experience (Goes et al 2011) and provides consumers with a channel with which to communicate with sales representatives and express their product expectations. Compared to telephone and traditional email services, live chat allows consumers and sellers to immediately communicate with each other in an interactive and efficient way (Tezcan 2011).…”

Understanding the Antecedents and Consequences of Live-Chat Use in E-Commerce Context

“…From a seller's perspective, the use of Live-Chat extends traditional customer service channels by providing personalized service for consumers through formulating one-toone relationships between sellers and consumers. Having the tool allows e-commerce websites to mimic a physical store shopping experience (Goes et al 2011). Consumers have a channel to communicate with the sales representatives and express their product expectations.…”