How IT-Artifacts Disturb Advice Giving -- Insights from Analyzing Implicit Communication

It has been shown that IT disturbs interpersonal communication in co-located advisory services. The central property of such encounters is their interpersonal character and therefore effective communication is essential for high quality service. While the available literature identifies some factors influencing the communication, the role of implicit communication and how IT influences it remains underexplored. In this paper we provide an analysis of 24 realistic financial service encounters. We observe unexpected conversation patterns that require further clarification, e.g., clients who abruptly stop talking or advisors who interrupt the clients. We identify the feedback in conversation as the communication component that suffers a lot from the introduction of IT. In the conventional advisory setting we did not observe those critical episodes. We discuss our findings in light of IS, CSCW, and communication science literature. The findings have implications for the future design of IT-supported service encounters.