The Impact of Perceived Listening Behavior in Voice-to-Voice Service Encounters

Abstract

Call centers have become an important customer access channel as well as an important source of customerrelated information. This boundary-spanning unit has finally enabled companies to take marketing’s commonplace wisdom of listening to the customer literally. As a result, there has been an increase in voice-to-voice service encounters and in these encounters listening as an essential skill. In this article, three dimensions of listening behavior are discerned: attentiveness, perceptiveness, and responsiveness. Results of an empirical study reveal that attentiveness is a direct driver of encounter satisfaction, whereas perceptiveness is primarily related to trust. Furthermore, the responsiveness dimension is related positively to both satisfaction and trust. In addition, we find a significant association between satisfaction and trust, and, finally, both a satisfactory evaluation of the voice-tovoice encounter and the build up of trust have a significant impact on the customer’s intention to contact the call center again in the future.