How the communication style of chatbots influences consumers’ satisfaction, trust, and engagement in the context of service failure

Na Cai, Shuhong Gao and Jinzhe Yan ()
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Na Cai: Gachon University
Shuhong Gao: Changzhou Vocational Institute of Mechatronic Technology
Jinzhe Yan: Gachon University

Palgrave Communications, 2024, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract This study examines consumers’ reactions to the communication styles of chatbots during failed service experiences. The current study explores whether the communication style adopted by a chatbot impacts consumer satisfaction and behavior intention and how expectancy violations can moderate these relationships in the service context. A pre-test examined the validity of the stimuli of chatbots that were either task-oriented or social-oriented after consumers encountered service failure. For more information, the experiment was designed to manipulate the AI-based chatbot agent’s process and style of communication and measure the role of expectancy violations. The main experiment results showed that interactions with social-oriented communication style chatbots enhance the level of consumers’ interaction satisfaction and intention of behavior. Respondents experienced a higher perception of warmth when interacting with social-oriented communication style chatbots than task-oriented. Moreover, expectancy violation moderates the mediation of warmth on the relationship between the chatbot’s communication style/type and interaction satisfaction, trust, and intention of patronage. Setting chatbots’ communication styles to be social-oriented can help reduce negative emotions among consumers caused by service failure; specifically, the perception of warmth created by the social-oriented communication style can alleviate negative evaluations of service agents and companies, such as dissatisfaction and loss of interest. Therefore, in managerial practice, the firm should choose the social-oriented communication style chatbot agent to recover the customer relationship after a service failure.

Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1057/s41599-024-03212-0

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