Search

The concept of conversational human voice (CHV) was introduced in 2006 by Kelleher and Miller indicating a personal, conversational style in online organizational communication. The CHV measurement scale they presented consists of eleven items, like ‘the brand treats me and others as human beings’ and ‘tries to be interesting in communication’. Various studies showed positive effects of this style on organizational outcomes. In this paper we examine the clearness of the notion of CHV. First, we tried to identify for each strategy specific linguistic characteristics as found in the literature on conversations and computer mediated communication. We succeeded for only eight of the eleven strategies. For example, ‘tries to be interesting’ is not directly translatable in linguistics characteristics. Next, we coded the linguistic characteristics in a corpus of 540 webcare interactions. The coding showed that the remaining eight strategies were partly overlapping, and were lacking some essential characteristics of organizational conversational style as well. We conclude that the current operationalization is not sufficient in capturing CHV: On the one hand it is too restrictive because CHV seems to be more than the eleven strategies; on the other hand it is too broad, because relations cannot be determined unambiguously between these strategies and linguistic characteristics.

The concept of conversational human voice (CHV) was introduced in 2006 by Kelleher and Miller indicating a personal, conversational style in online organizational communication. The CHV measurement scale they presented consists of eleven items, like ‘the brand treats me and others as human beings’ and ‘tries to be interesting in communication’. Various studies showed positive effects of this style on organizational outcomes. In this paper we examine the clearness of the notion of CHV. First, we tried to identify for each strategy specific linguistic characteristics as found in the literature on conversations and computer mediated communication. We succeeded for only eight of the eleven strategies. For example, ‘tries to be interesting’ is not directly translatable in linguistics characteristics. Next, we coded the linguistic characteristics in a corpus of 540 webcare interactions. The coding showed that the remaining eight strategies were partly overlapping, and were lacking some essential characteristics of organizational conversational style as well. We conclude that the current operationalization is not sufficient in capturing CHV: On the one hand it is too restrictive because CHV seems to be more than the eleven strategies; on the other hand it is too broad, because relations cannot be determined unambiguously between these strategies and linguistic characteristics.

The concept of conversational human voice (CHV) was introduced in 2006 by Kelleher and Miller indicating a personal, conversational style in online organizational communication. The CHV measurement scale they presented consists of eleven items, like ‘the brand treats me and others as human beings’ and ‘tries to be interesting in communication’. Various studies showed positive effects of this style on organizational outcomes. In this paper we examine the clearness of the notion of CHV. First, we tried to identify for each strategy specific linguistic characteristics as found in the literature on conversations and computer mediated communication. We succeeded for only eight of the eleven strategies. For example, ‘tries to be interesting’ is not directly translatable in linguistics characteristics. Next, we coded the linguistic characteristics in a corpus of 540 webcare interactions. The coding showed that the remaining eight strategies were partly overlapping, and were lacking some essential characteristics of organizational conversational style as well. We conclude that the current operationalization is not sufficient in capturing CHV: On the one hand it is too restrictive because CHV seems to be more than the eleven strategies; on the other hand it is too broad, because relations cannot be determined unambiguously between these strategies and linguistic characteristics.