She? The Role of Perceived Agent Gender in Social Media Customer Service

Junyuan Ke, Yang Gao, Huaxia Rui, Shujing Sun

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

This paper investigated the role of perceived agent gender in customer behavior using a unique dataset from Southwest Airlines' Twitter account. We inferred agent gender based on the first names provided by agents when responding to customers. We measured customer behavior using three outcomes: whether a customer decided to continue the service conversation upon receiving an agent’s initial response as well as the valence and arousal levels in their second tweet if the customer chose to continue the interaction. Our identification strategy relied on the Backdoor Criterion and hinged on the assumption that customer service requests are assigned to the next available agent, independent of agent gender. The findings revealed that customers were more likely to continue interactions with female agents than male agents and they were more negative in valence but less intense in arousal with the former group than with the latter.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationInternational Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2023
Subtitle of host publication"Rising like a Phoenix: Emerging from the Pandemic and Reshaping Human Endeavors with Digital Technologies"
PublisherAssociation for Information Systems
ISBN (Electronic)9781713893622
StatePublished - 2023
Event44th International Conference on Information Systems: Rising like a Phoenix: Emerging from the Pandemic and Reshaping Human Endeavors with Digital Technologies, ICIS 2023 - Hyderibad, India
Duration: Dec 10 2023Dec 13 2023

Publication series

NameInternational Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2023: "Rising like a Phoenix: Emerging from the Pandemic and Reshaping Human Endeavors with Digital Technologies"

Conference

Conference44th International Conference on Information Systems: Rising like a Phoenix: Emerging from the Pandemic and Reshaping Human Endeavors with Digital Technologies, ICIS 2023
Country/TerritoryIndia
CityHyderibad
Period12/10/2312/13/23

Keywords

  • customer service
  • gender
  • social media
  • stereotype

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Science Applications
  • Information Systems

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