Closing the gap in customer service encounters: Customers’ use of upshot formulations to manage service responses

Within the context of service inquiries, and the specialized inferential logic associated with the particularized activities (Levinson 1992) there is a gap in the orientations of customers and service representatives. Specifically, one problem that arises in customer service encounters is that customers and service representatives appear to arrive at different understandings of what constitutes a relevant response to a service inquiry. By examining one type of customer service context, calls to an electronic repair facility, this article offers a conversation analytic account of how customers use formulations to collaboratively achieve a mutually agreed upon answer to their service inquiry and close the gap in the underlying logics that emerge in these calls.