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Don't call us,we'll call you: Considering cognitive and physical effort in designing effective response systems to manage extended in-process wait |
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| Authors: | Shai Danziger Ellen Garbarino Simone Moran |
| Institution: | 1. Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
University of Sydney Business School, Sydney University, Sydney, Australia Shai Danziger, Ellen Garbarino, and Simone Moran contributed equally to this work.;2. University of Sydney Business School, Sydney University, Sydney, Australia;3. Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management, Ben-Gurion University of Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel |
| Abstract: | People must often wait for days or weeks to receive test results, price quotes, products, etc. Service providers may manage user experience during such in-process waits using notification systems that inform users when a response is available or inquiry systems that require users to inquire about response availability, thereby imposing prospective memory requirements on users. Based on the prospective memory and wait time literature, we make predictions regarding how response system (notification vs. inquiry) moderates the effects of waits that are shorter or longer than the provider promised on user evaluation of the wait. We find that users of a notification system evaluate a wait more positively and are less sensitive to deviations of actual from promised wait time than are users of an inquiry system. This advantage was more pronounced for a wait that was longer (vs. shorter) than promised. These effects of system and expectation on evaluation were fully mediated by their impact on the cognitive and physical effort of navigating the system. Finally, a week after having experienced a wait, users of an inquiry system who had waited longer (vs. shorter) than promised cooperated less on a follow-up task, highlighting another downside of using an inquiry system. |
| Keywords: | cognitive effort physical effort prospective memory response system wait time |