Facilitating Coordination in Customer Support Teams: A Framework and Its Implications for the Design of Information Technology

Sukumar Rathnam, Vijay Mahajan and Andrew B. Whinston
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Andrew B. Whinston: Scopus Technology, Inc, The university of Texas at Austin, Graduate School of Business, Department of Marketing Administration, CBA 7 202 Austin, Texas 78712-1176

Management Science, 1995, vol. 41, issue 12, 1900-1921

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.

Keywords: customer support; coordination; business process analysis; groupware (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1995
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