Human communication in customer-agent-computer interaction: Face-to-face versus over telephone

Customer service can be provided over various communication modes, such as face-to-face, telephone, email or websites. In this paper we examine a setting where a service, such as travel planning, is provided to a customer through a human agent, either face-to-face or via telephone. Specifically, the setting requires three entities, a customer who has approached a business, a representative for the organisation and a computer which the representative uses to support the task. Two experiments were conducted to investigate how the two human entities interact over two different communication modes (face-to-face and telephone) when there is also a computer involved in the interaction. The results showed a significantly shorter task completion time via telephone. There was also a difference in the style of communication, with face-to-face having more single activities (such as talking only), while when using the telephone there was more doubling up in activities (talking while also searching on the computer). There was only a small difference in subjective satisfaction. The results suggest that telephone interaction, although containing fewer communication cues (such as body language), is not necessarily an impoverished mode. Telephone interaction is less time consuming and more task-focused.