Summary

This dissertation aims to provide an exploration of the main trends shaping the landscape of the customer care function in contemporary business environments. By examining key challenges and opportunities within the field, the studies presented in this dissertation offer valuable insights into the strategies and practices that firms can leverage to enhance their customer care and foster enduring relationships with their customers. The first essay focuses on the “right-channeling” strategies that a firm can employ to facilitate the transition of customers from offline to digital channels and provides valuable insights for managers aiming to create and execute firm-driven channel migration strategies associated with improved business outcomes. The second essay outlines a roadmap detailing the utilization of unstructured data from customer care interactions for the estimation of churn models, tailored to the specific objectives of the firm (i.e., churn prediction vis-à-vis churn understanding). Finally, the third essay focuses on linguistic styles of customer care agents and offers actionable insights for managers aiming to enhance customer care agents’ performance in order to improve customer satisfaction.