Personal assistance

As was pointed out in the previous discussions on the characteristics of the “interactive features” and “transactions” dimensions of the electronic servicescape it is important to the customers that their electronic operations are supported and that they know that their issues are taken care of by the service providers. Interactive features provide the customers with tools (navigational elements) and support (supporting elements) for operating in the electronic servicescape. Supporting elements of the interactive features dimension refer to providing the customers with real-time interactive support during their electronic service operations, such as calculators and help icons. The main purpose of the “supporting ele-ments” is to ensure that customers have better possibilities to complete their electronic operations by themselves, be it information acquisition or other electronic transactions.

However, customers may also face more extensive problems in the electronic servic-escape, and thus, they might need more than just support. They might need personal as-sistance, which refers to customers’ possibilities to become assisted by contacting the service personnel of a service provider. Personal assistance can be offered via e-mail, or telephone, or even chat service, and it might be needed in situations in which the customers have run out of ideas how to continue their operations in the electronic environment.

The empirical results reveal that personal assistance, or at least, the possibility for it, is a crucial characteristic of the electronic servicescape especially in insurance context since insurance issues might be complex to the customers. Otherwise, the customers might even end up canceling the electronic operations as a whole. The following citations illustrate this insight:

P6: … insurance… is not considered easy… in my opinion it is essential in insurance that there is that [personal] help available in some way when filling in a form, because the issue is something like insurance.

P3: That can easily be the end of the use. If there’s no help and you don’t know what you’re doing.

The most crucial conceptual sub-dimension reflecting the personal assistance dimension of the electronic servicescape is versatility. Versatility refers to the customers’ insights into the presence of various different ways to get assistance. More precisely, these various ways ofMore precisely, these various ways of the personal assistance in the electronic insurance service environment comprise (not in order of significance): e-mail, telephone, and chat (Figure 30).

The empirical results reveal that versatility is particularly important because in that way the customers can choose the most appropriate and suitable way to contact a service pro-vider in the electronic servicescape. Especially telephone and e-mail are regarded as

fea-FIGURE 30. CONCEPTUAL NATURE OF “PERSONAL ASSISTANCE” PERSONAL ASSISTANCE

VERSATILITY

Chat e-mail Telephone

sible, and also traditional, ways of contacting the service provider. These arguments are supported by the citations below:

P6: Preferably in several ways. Help available.

P10: Actually that previous one was good in a sense that there were different ways of getting in touch with. Either by email or by phone or. Everyone can choose for them-selves. And why not have chat also, then it would have everything.

Concerning different forms of contacting the insurance service provider, a chat service was actually perceived as a positive novel way to get assistance in electronic insurance service environment by many interviewees. The empirical results indicate that a chat service can be considered as a form of personal assistance that includes features from both telephone and Internet-based communication practices. One respondent indicated, by referring to the strengths of the electronic service environment in general, that by using a chat service the customer can remain faceless while communicating with insurance service personnel of the service provider:

P6: I think a chat is a good intermediate form between phone and Internet, it’s not the same as phoning, but you still get personal service. So, on the other hand you can still be sort of faceless… I think as an idea it’s really good just because it’s an intermediate form between the Internet and a phone service.

In addition, the empirical results suggest that one of the crucial strengths increasing the usefulness of the chat service is the fact that the information the customer servant delivers to the customer remains on the screen. In this way, the customer can read it as many times as he wants in order to comprehend the message:

P17: … that [chat] is a double-faced thing… if it’s at all a complicated matter, to under-stand the answer the customer service person gives, then in a way it would be good to receive the [answer] on the screen as a text, you can read it ten times until you under-stand it…

On the other hand, there were also opposite opinions. One respondent commented that using the chat service requires more from the customer since he has to pay more attention to the structure of the question. Therefore, he perceived the chat service as not being so useful when the customer tries to get an answer to a complex question:

P18: … in [the chat] the questions have to be very clearly formulated in order to get an unambiguous answer, but on the phone you can ask again and ask for clarification. It’s perhaps a bit more difficult to get an answer in [chat] to some complicated question.

Furthermore, the empirical results reveal that a chat service is still more associated with entertainment services than services such as insurance by the respondents, and thereby, the customers are not used to receiving personal assistance through chat-like services. One respondent also doubted whether or not it is safe to deliver personal information on the Web as the last citation illustrates:

P15: The chat is so much more unknown, that I’ve not tried it anywhere myself… So it probably excludes many at that point. It’s still such a new thing that [chat].

P14: …it’s probably still more part of the entertainment world, that chat.

P7: In case you dare to reveal your personal information there [chat]. Because you might have to ask things, which you don’t necessarily want everyone to know, so it would be some kind of secure connection with a certain person. Not too easy to connect to or even be hacked. Because there are often questions with insurance issues [which] don’t need to be general knowledge.

However, telephone is still the most preferred way to contact the insurance service pro-vider. In my opinion this most probably refers to the long traditions of getting personal assistance in insurance-related matters over the telephone. In addition, as the empirical results indicate (at least some) people still remain somewhat skeptic towards the function-ality of new technology. Therefore, a telephone number is required. These arguments are supported by the following citations:

P10: No thanks. I want a phone number. To sort out the questions.

P11: I think that [the chat] is quite a good idea, but a phone number could still be avail-able somewhere.

P17: Yes it is and it’s true that there really should be a phone number also, because al-ways with these technical things [chat]… in general the first thought is that this is not going to work anyway. Or that you will not be able to reach anybody.

To conclude, if customers face problems which they cannot handle by themselves in the electronic service environment, they need personal assistance. Telephone is the most used way to contact the insurance service provider. However, the empirical results of the study clearly indicate that the chat service clearly has a potential to become a respectable interac-tive, and electronic, way to contact the (insurance) service provider in the future when the customers just become more familiar with it.