Paul W. Fombelle

How Customer Participation in B2B Peer-to-Peer Problem-Solving Communities Influences the Need for Traditional Customer Service

Customer support is critical for the success of business-to-business (B2B) service firms. A key issue such firms face is how to reduce customers’ reliance on traditional support service. B2B companies are increasingly turning to firm hosted virtual peer-to-peer problem-solving (P3) communities to fulfill some of their customer support service needs. This raises the question: Does customer problem-solving participation in such communities reduce the demands associated with traditional customer support service? This research investigates the effects of problem-solving customer participation in a P3 community among global B2B customers. Results reveal that community problem-solving customer participation, in terms of helping oneself (posting questions) and helping others (responding to peer questions), reduces the participant’s use of traditional customer support service. Results show that the frequency of logging in to the community and breadth of community memberships both serve to increase the use of traditional customer support service. This is the first empirical study to investigate the longitudinal effects of problem-solving customer participation in a peer-to-peer problem-solving community of B2B customers. Promoting peer-to-peer customer interactions provides managers with strategic levers to increase the efficiencies and the effectiveness of their support service.

“Mere Measurement Plus”: How Solicitation of Open-Ended Positive Feedback Influences Customer Purchase Behavior

In two studies (a longitudinal field experiment with an established business-to-consumer national chain, and a field experiment with a business-to-business software manufacturer), the authors demonstrate that starting a survey with an open-ended positive solicitation increases customer purchase behavior. Study 1, a longitudinal field experiment, shows that one year after the completion of a survey that began by asking customers what went well during their purchase experience, those customers spent 8.25% more than customers who had completed a survey that did not include the positive solicitation. Study 2 utlizes multiple treatment groups to assess the stepwise gains of solicitation, measurement, and solicitation frame. The results demonstrate (1) a mere solicitation effect, (2) a traditional mere measurement effect, and (3) an additional “mere measurement plus” effect of an open-ended positive solicitation; all effects increased customer spending. Specifically, starting a survey with an open-ended positive solicitation resulted in a 32.88% increase in customer spending relative to a survey with no open-ended positive solicitation. The findings suggest that firms can proactively influence the feedback process. Soliciting open-ended positive feedback can create positively biased memories of an experience; the subsequent expression of those memories in an open-ended feedback format further reinforces them, making them more salient and accessible in guiding future purchase behavior.

Happy Users, Grumpy Bosses: Current Community Engagement Literature and the Impact of Support Engagement in a B2B Setting on User and Upper Management Satisfaction

Managerial interest in facilitating online communities is thriving. We provide an overview of the current literature on community engagement from which we conclude that community engagement is investigated in various settings (in B2B and B2C environments), with various purposes (e.g., product support, brand communities), and shows somewhat mixed outcomes. Also, outcomes of community engagement are always investigated at the individual user level, even in B2B settings. However, in B2B networks there are often multiple layers within one organization, as the individual who uses a community is often distinct from the individual(s) responsible for purchase decisions. In the empirical part of our chapter, we go beyond the individual user by investigating how both users and upper management value the various ways their organization obtains customer support.

Autonomy in Residential Care: Using TEAMWORK and the Deep Dive to Facilitate Interdisciplinary Collaboration

Residential care communities provide services that allow individuals with chronic health conditions to live independently, yet the transition from the home environment to a residential care community may be associated with loss of autonomy. Services that aim to promote autonomy in the residential care setting have the potential to improve quality of life, yet the needs of individuals with chronic health conditions are complex and best understood from an interdisciplinary perspective. Although interdisciplinary research has been increasingly applied in design practice and academia, it is associated with unique challenges such as divergent terminology, differing theoretical frameworks, and varying criteria to evaluate success across disciplines. In this paper, we describe strategies to draw knowledge from a variety of disciplines, using our team’s efforts to frame the problem of autonomy among individuals with chronic health conditions who live in residential care settings as a case study.

Suggestions are Welcome: Provider Responses to Unsolicted Advice Feedback

In today’s competitive business landscape many companies are increasingly encouraging customers to take a more active role in producing goods and services. Many researchers have argued that inviting customers to co-produce enhances service quality and satisfaction (Meuter and Bitner 1998). To date, little is known on how a company should respond when a customer voluntarily participates in the production process as an advisor and advocate. A notable phenomenon is the customer’s desire for advocacy that results in the customer volunteering ideas and suggestions to the service provider. From the service provider perspective this trend is exciting, yet equally troublesome, as managers must consider whether to implement a customer’s suggestion, whether to respond, and if so, how to respond without damaging the relationship. Often individual suggestions disappear in a black hole and the advice-giver receives no acknowledgement that the organization values their efforts. The marketing literature has not addressed the importance of advice acknowledgement and ways to negate repercussions of not implementing customer advice. Prior research has examined the impact of acknowledging customer complaints and compliments on customer attitudes (Bone et al. 2009).