فرآیند حل مشکلات با فناوری سلف سرویس: یک بررسی از نگرش کاربر The process of solving problems with self‑service technologies: a study from the user’s perspective

 Introduction Self-service technologies (SSTs) are increasingly being provided by service providers in diverse environments [15, 99]. SSTs are now prevalent in diverse spheres of life including supermarket check-outs, banks, car parking, ofcial documents such as passport and visa applications and renewals, public transport, libraries, and many others. A Gartner report [31] noted that “[customers] can go further down the customer journey without human engagement than ever before”, and customer service blog Fonolo [29] suggested that 50% of customers want to be able to solve product issues themselves; 70% expect a self-service section on a company website; and predicted that within 1–2 years, 80% of interactions with an organization will not involve a person. In addition to customer benefts, there are many motivations for organizations to facilitate customer self-service. On a comparative basis, a selfservice transaction has been estimated to cost only 6% of the cost of delivering an equivalent service via a telephone channel, and a mere 0.025% of the cost of a faceto-face transaction [17]. However, more self-service means that service users are increasingly expected to solve their own self-service problems when they occur [43, 45, 46, 66]. Problems arise from technical errors, user service support staf or user’s own mistakes [107]. When SST problems occur, it is typically the user who identifes their perceived SST problem, solves it with their own eforts or collaborates on its solution, and checks whether a solution has solved the problem [43, 46, 55, 65]. For example, a user who is experiencing a problem with an online welfare beneft application system may initially repeat what they have done several times in case they made a typing error. They may restart their device, or the application they are using, check their internet connectivity, or mobile phone data service credit balance. If their problem persists, they may start by using the available self-help information, frequently-asked questions, or the trouble shooting features on the interface of the SST. If the result is still not satisfactory, and the user still wants to continue solving the problem, they may ask for help from another user (e.g., a colleague) or electronically through an online discussion forum. If the problem is still unsolved, the user may decide to ask for help by contacting user support service staf, even if they expect this will require a long wait time. The process of solving this problem ends when the user either achieves a satisfactory result or gives up trying to solve it.1