How Channel Choice and Service Failure Influence Customer Satisfaction: The Case of Public Services

This study investigates the impact of a channel selection and switching on satisfaction with government services. Specifically, using an archival dataset of telephone surveys administered by U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) with more than 2,700 respondents, we measure the effect of channel selection (online, in-person, or telephone) and switching (from online to another) on satisfaction of individual applicants with retirement benefits. We hypothesize the impact of channel choice and switching on service satisfaction drawing upon the marketing literature on self-service technologies and service failures. We find that the successful use of the online self-service channel does not hurt customer satisfaction. Quite paradoxically, a channel switching from the online to the in-person or telephone channel due to a service failure may in fact improve customer satisfaction. We also find that the impact of channel choice and switching on satisfaction varies across users’ experience with PC and the Internet and educational attainment.