Leveraging Philanthropic Behavior for Customer Support: The Case of User Support Forums

Online user forums for technical support are being widely adopted by IT firms to supplement traditional customer support channels. Customers benefit from having an additional means of product support, while firms benefit by lowering the costs of supporting a large customer base. Typically these forums are populated with content generated by users, consisting of questioners (solution seekers) and solvers (solution providers). While questioners can be expected to keep returning as long as they can find answers, firms must employ different means in order to recognize and encourage the contributions of solvers. We identify and compare the impact of two widely adopted recognition mechanisms on the philanthropic behavior of solvers. In the first mechanism, feedback-based recognition, solver contribution is evaluated by questioners. In the second mechanism, quantity-based recognition, all contributions are weighted equally regardless of questioner feedback. We draw on the pro-social behavior literature to identify four drivers of solver contribution: (1) peer recognition, (2) image motivation, (3) social comparison, and (4) social exposure. We show that the choice of recognition mechanism strongly influences a solver's problem-solving behavior, highlighting the importance of the firm's decision in this regard. We address issues of solvers self-selecting a type of recognition mechanism by using propensity score analysis in order to show that solver behavior is a result of forum conditioning. We also study the impact of the recognition mechanism on forum quality and the effectiveness of support to draw comparative analytics.

[1]  Wanda J. Orlikowski,et al.  Learning from Notes: organizational issues in groupware implementation , 1992, CSCW '92.

[2]  Robert W. Zmud,et al.  Behavioral Intention Formation in Knowledge Sharing: Examining the Roles of Extrinsic Motivators, Social-Psychological Factors, and Organizational Climate , 2005, MIS Q..

[3]  M. Olson,et al.  The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. , 1973 .

[4]  Dennis F. Galletta,et al.  Individual Centrality and Performance in Virtual R&D Groups: An Empirical Study , 2003, Manag. Sci..

[5]  Sheryl B. Ball,et al.  The economic value of status , 1998 .

[6]  Karim R. Lakhani,et al.  Incentives and Problem Uncertainty in Innovation Contests: An Empirical Analysis , 2011, Manag. Sci..

[7]  Samer Faraj,et al.  Why Should I Share? Examining Social Capital and Knowledge Contribution in Electronic Networks of Practice , 2005, MIS Q..

[8]  M. Hogg,et al.  Social Identity and Self-Categorization Processes in Organizational Contexts , 2000 .

[9]  S. Ghoshal,et al.  Social Capital, Intellectual Capital, and the Organizational Advantage , 1998 .

[10]  Rahul Telang,et al.  Does the Web Reduce Customer Service Cost? Empirical Evidence from a Call Center , 2012 .

[11]  George R. Goethals,et al.  Social Comparison Theory , 1986 .

[12]  R. Kahn,et al.  The Social Psychology of Organizations , 1966 .

[13]  Vasja Vehovar,et al.  Posting, quoting, and replying: a comparison of methodological approaches to measure communication ties in web forums , 2012 .

[14]  Susanne Neckermann,et al.  Awards as Incentives , 2008 .

[15]  M. Olson,et al.  The Logic of Collective Action , 1965 .

[16]  Sven C. Voelpel,et al.  Five steps to creating a global knowledge-sharing system: Siemens' ShareNet , 2005 .

[17]  Ko de Ruyter,et al.  Beyond the Call of Duty: Why Customers Contribute to Firm-hosted Commercial Online Communities , 2007 .

[18]  Fabrizio Sebastiani,et al.  Machine learning in automated text categorization , 2001, CSUR.

[19]  Sinan Aral,et al.  Identifying Social Influence: A Comment on Opinion Leadership and Social Contagion in New Product Diffusion , 2010, Mark. Sci..

[20]  J. Tirole,et al.  Incentives and Prosocial Behavior , 2004 .

[21]  Mark Lillibridge,et al.  Incentives for Sharing in Peer-to-Peer Networks , 2001, WELCOM.

[22]  M. Weisz.  Econometric Analysis Of Panel Data , 2016 .

[23]  E. Morrison,et al.  NEWCOMERS' RELATIONSHIPS: THE ROLE OF SOCIAL NETWORK TIES DURING SOCIALIZATION , 2002 .

[24]  Z. Justin Ren,et al.  Call Center Outsourcing: Coordinating Staffing Level and Service Quality , 2008, Manag. Sci..

[25]  Josh Lerner,et al.  The Simple Economics of Open Source , 2000 .

[26]  P. Wichardt.  A Status Based Motivation for Behavioural Altruism , 2007 .

[27]  Paul H. White,et al.  Testing the contribution of self-evaluation to goal-setting effects. , 1995 .

[28]  Eric Lease Morgan,et al.  Review of The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary by Eric S. Raymond, Sebastopol, Calif.: O'Reilly, 1999 , 2000 .

[29]  Enrique Fatás Juberías,et al.  Reciprocity, matching and conditional Cooperation in two public goods games , 2005 .

[30]  Anindya Ghose,et al.  Internet Exchanges for Used Goods: An Empirical Analysis of Trade Patterns and Adverse Selection , 2008, MIS Q..

[31]  Robin Teigland,et al.  The provision of online public goods: Examining social structure in an electronic network of practice , 2009, Decis. Support Syst..

[32]  Margaret A. Neale,et al.  Who's Really Sharing? Effects of Social and Expert Status on Knowledge Exchange Within Groups , 2003, Manag. Sci..

[33]  Hinrich Schütze,et al.  Introduction to information retrieval , 2008 .

[34]  Vandana Singh,et al.  Open Source Technical Support: A Look at Peer Help-Giving , 2006, Proceedings of the 39th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'06).

[35]  A. J. Bernheim Brush,et al.  Assessing differential usage of usenet social accounting meta-data , 2005, CHI.

[36]  Isabelle Bouty.  Interpersonal and Interaction Influences on Informal Resource Exchanges Between R&D Researchers Across Organizational Boundaries , 2000 .

[37]  D. Rubin,et al.  The central role of the propensity score in observational studies for causal effects , 1983 .

[38]  S. Kiesler,et al.  The kindness of strangers: on the usefulness of electronic weak ties for technical advice , 1996 .

[39]  Atreyi Kankanhalli,et al.  Contributing Knowledge to Electronic Knowledge Repositories: An Empirical Investigation , 2005, MIS Q..

[40]  Mark S. Ackerman,et al.  Questions in, knowledge in?: a study of naver's question answering community , 2009, CHI.

[41]  R. Ryan,et al.  Relation of reward contingency and interpersonal context to intrinsic motivation: A review and test using cognitive evaluation theory. , 1983 .

[42]  Paul Resnick,et al.  Reputation systems , 2000, CACM.

[43]  Eric von Hippel,et al.  Satisfying Heterogeneous User Needs Via Innovation Toolkits: The Case of Apache Security Software , 2002 .

[44]  S. Ghoshal,et al.  Social Capital and Value Creation: The Role of Intrafirm Networks , 1998 .

[45]  G. Marwell,et al.  Social Networks and Collective Action: A Theory of the Critical Mass. III , 1988, American Journal of Sociology.

[46]  Jasjit Singh,et al.  Collaborative Networks as Determinants of Knowledge Diffusion Patterns , 2005, Manag. Sci..

[47]  Soon Ang,et al.  Work Outcomes and Job Design for Contract Versus Permanent Information Systems Professionals on Software Development Teams , 2001, MIS Q..

[48]  Shenyang Guo,et al.  Propensity Score Analysis: Statistical Methods and Applications , 2014 .

[49]  Sascha O. Becker,et al.  Estimation of Average Treatment Effects Based on Propensity Scores , 2002 .

[50]  Xi Zhang,et al.  Is Reward always effective as Incentive in Electronic Knowledge Repositories? A Game-Theoretical Perspective , 2006, AMCIS.

[51]  Rahul Telang,et al.  The Economics of Peer-to-Peer Networks , 2003 .

[52]  R. Emerson.  Power-Dependence Relations , 1962, Power in Modern Societies.

[53]  Scott McCoy,et al.  The most important issues in knowledge management , 2002, CACM.

[54]  Stefan Stremersch,et al.  Social Contagion and Income Heterogeneity in New Product Diffusion: A Meta-Analytic Test , 2004 .

[55]  Eric S. Raymond,et al.  The cathedral and the bazaar - musings on Linux and Open Source by an accidental revolutionary , 2001 .

[56]  Atul Nerkar,et al.  Evolution of R&D Capabilities: The Role of Knowledge Networks Within a Firm , 2005, Manag. Sci..

[57]  E. Deci,et al.  A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. , 1999, Psychological bulletin.

[58]  Duncan J. Watts,et al.  Financial incentives and the "performance of crowds" , 2009, SIGKDD Explor..

[59]  D. R. White,et al.  Structural cohesion and embeddedness: A hierarchical concept of social groups , 2003 .

[60]  Shalini Khazanchi,et al.  Rewards and creative performance: a meta-analytic test of theoretically derived hypotheses. , 2012, Psychological bulletin.

[61]  Andrew B. Whinston,et al.  Research Commentary: Introducing a Third Dimension in Information Systems Design - The Case for Incentive Alignment , 2001, Inf. Syst. Res..

[62]  Thomas W. Valente,et al.  Opinion Leadership and Social Contagion in New Product Diffusion , 2011, Mark. Sci..

[63]  D. Raban.  The incentive structure in an online information market , 2008 .

[64]  K. M. Bartol,et al.  Encouraging Knowledge Sharing: The Role of Organizational Reward Systems , 2002 .

[65]  Eric A. von Hippel,et al.  How Open Source Software Works: 'Free' User-to-User Assistance? , 2000 .

[66]  Nicholas A. Christakis,et al.  Commentary - Contagion in Prescribing Behavior Among Networks of Doctors , 2011, Mark. Sci..

[67]  W. Greene,et al.  计量经济分析 = Econometric analysis , 2009 .

[68]  Lee Sproull,et al.  The Role of Feedback in Managing the Internet-Based Volunteer Work Force , 2008, Inf. Syst. Res..

[69]  T. S. Raghu,et al.  Toward an Integration of Agent- and Activity-Centric Approaches in Organizational Process Modeling: Incorporating Incentive Mechanisms , 2004, Inf. Syst. Res..

[70]  S. Jarvenpaa,et al.  Are Contributions to P2P Technical Forums Private or Public Goods? – An Empirical Investigation , 2003 .

[71]  U. Fischbacher,et al.  Are People Conditionally Cooperative? Evidence from a Public Goods Experiment , 2001 .

[72]  J. Hausman.  Specification tests in econometrics , 1978 .

[73]  Pablo Casas-Arce,et al.  Relative Performance Compensation, Contests, and Dynamic Incentives , 2009, Manag. Sci..

[74]  Y. Mundlak.  On the Pooling of Time Series and Cross Section Data , 1978 .

[75]  Roger Guimerà,et al.  Team Assembly Mechanisms Determine Collaboration Network Structure and Team Performance , 2005, Science.

[76]  B. Frey,et al.  Social Comparisons and Pro-social Behavior: Testing "Conditional Cooperation" in a Field Experiment , 2004 .

[77]  Robert H. Frank,et al.  Preferences for Status , 2008 .

[78]  F. Thoemmes,et al.  Propensity Score Analysis , 2015 .

[79]  A. Cameron,et al.  Econometric models based on count data. Comparisons and applications of some estimators and tests , 1986 .

[80]  R. Eisenberger,et al.  Detrimental effects of reward. Reality or myth? , 1996, The American psychologist.

[81]  Shane R. Thye.  A Status Value Theory of Power in Exchange Relations , 2000, American Sociological Review.

[82]  Robb Willer.  Groups Reward Individual Sacrifice: The Status Solution to the Collective Action Problem , 2009 .

[83]  Lars Frederiksen,et al.  Why Do Users Contribute to Firm-Hosted User Communities? The Case of Computer-Controlled Music Instruments , 2006, Organ. Sci..

[84]  Young-Gul Kim,et al.  Breaking the Myths of Rewards: An Exploratory Study of Attitudes about Knowledge Sharing , 2002, Inf. Resour. Manag. J..

[85]  Rahul Telang,et al.  DRAFT : Preliminary and Incomplete Comments Welcome Competing with Free : The Impact of Movie Broadcasts on DVD Sales and Internet Piracy , 2006 .

[86]  Edward L. Deci,et al.  Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior , 1975, Perspectives in Social Psychology.

[87]  Anindya Ghose,et al.  Examining the Relationship Between Reviews and Sales: The Role of Reviewer Identity Disclosure in Electronic Markets , 2008, Inf. Syst. Res..

[88]  D. Almirall,et al.  Do CRM Systems Cause One-to-One Marketing Effectiveness? , 2006, math/0609199.

[89]  Francis de Véricourt,et al.  Managing Response Time in a Call-Routing Problem with Service Failure , 2005, Oper. Res..

[90]  D. Ariely,et al.  Doing Good or Doing Well? Image Motivation and Monetary Incentives in Behaving Prosocially , 2007, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[91]  Ravi Bapna,et al.  When snipers become predators: can mechanism design save online auctions? , 2003, CACM.

[92]  W. P. Barnett,et al.  Work group demography, social integration, and turnover. , 1989 .

[93]  Sidney C. Sufrin,et al.  The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. , 1966 .