Efficacy of the Customer Service

What it measures

A four-item sentence-completion scale measuring a customer's expectation or perception of a service agent's ability to take effective action on their behalf. Items complete a stem expressing expectations about the agent and tap into doing something for the customer, taking action, proactive problem resolution, and calming communication. Available in both pre-interaction (expectation) and post-interaction (evaluation) versions. Developed in chatbot service research but applicable to any agent-customer interaction context.

Response format

7-point Likert (sentence completion)

Scale items

• ...do something for me.
• ...take action.
• ...be proactive in resolving my issues.
• ...say things to calm me down.

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

SENTENCE COMPLETION FORMAT: Items complete a stem such as 'I expect [agent] to...' (pre-interaction) or 'This [agent] will...' (post-interaction). Two reliability estimates: α = .89 (pre-interaction) and α = .92 (post-interaction) — Crolic et al. (2022, Studies 4 and 5). Same paper as Anthropomorphism of the Object (ANTH, ID 2014) and Attitude Toward the Company (Overall Evaluation) (ATCOE, ID 2092).

Recommended companion scales

Citation

Crolic, Cammy, Felipe Thomaz, Rhonda Hadi, and Andrew T. Stephen (2022). Blame the bot: Anthropomorphism and anger in customer-chatbot interactions. Journal of Marketing, 86(1), 132–148.

Keywords