Telecommuting work represents a strategy for managing the growing number of older people in the workforce. This study involved a simulated customer service telecommuting task that used e-mail to answer customer queries about media-related products and company policies. Participants included 27 "younger" older adults (50-65 years) and 25 "older" older adults (66-80 years). The participants performed the task for two 2-hr sessions a day over 4 consecutive days. Although both age groups showed significant improvement across sessions on many of the performance criteria, in general the improvements were more marked for the older age-group participants. However, the participants from both age groups had difficulty meeting some of the task performance requirements. These results are discussed in terms of training strategies for older workers.
This paper discusses the use of a simulation tool for investigating information search performance in customer service work involving e-mail correspondence. Some unique opportunities for examining issues in aging and task performance that this customer service task simulator provides are also discussed. Integrated into this discussion are some results from an initial study of age group differences in performance of this type of task. Most importantly, this simulator's portability and the ease in which realistic customer queries can be captured enable it to be used as a platform for translating experimental research findings into more real-world settings by investigating task performance within the user's home environment.
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