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- Title
Facilitating coordination in customer support means: A framework and its implications for the...
- Authors
Rathnam, Sukumar; Mahajan, Vijay
- Abstract
The management of coordination gaps is critical to the effective functioning of a customer support team. To address the managerial challenge of designing Information Technology (IT) to facilitate coordination in customer support teams, this paper develops a framework describing the drivers of coordination gaps in customer support teams. Measures for the characteristics of problem resolution processes, the characteristics of IT that assist in the management of coordination gaps, and coordination gaps are developed and validated. Results from a field study administered to 399 respondents from 41 teams in Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Seton Hospital, and Southwestern Bell support the proposition that coordination gaps arise from a lack of fit between the characteristics of problem resolution processes used and the characteristics of IT used. What is more important, the results also indicate that processes with differing characteristics require different kinds of IT.
- Subjects
CUSTOMER services; INFORMATION technology; COORDINATION (Human services); QUALITY of service; INFORMATION resources management; INFORMATION resources; MANAGEMENT; PROBLEM solving; TEAMS in the workplace; MANAGEMENT science; TECHNOLOGY
- Publication
Management Science, 1995, Vol 41, Issue 12, p1900
- ISSN
0025-1909
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1287/mnsc.41.12.1900