Too busy to help: Antecedents and outcomes of interactional justice in web-based service encounters

Highlights：

• Web-based live-chat support services are one promising and growing in popularity means toward improving customer service.

• We study the success factors of such services using service marketing and justice lenses of analysis.

• We apply SEM techniques to data collected from users of live-chat support services of two libraries.

• The findings suggest that interactional justice is an important success driver, which is diminished by the perceived busyness of the service provider.

• The findings also suggest that this effect is moderated by the duration of the live-chat session.

• Implications for research and practice are discussed.