New paper: Forced vs Voluntary Chatbot Use: How It Shapes Customer Satisfaction and Blame

As chatbots become an integral part of customer service, mistakes remain inevitable. Whether it’s a failure to understand the customer’s intent or an error in executing an order, such failures raise a key question: Who do customers blame— themselves or the company? Blame attribution shapes customers’ subsequent behaviour. For instance, if I think that I received … Continue reading New paper: Forced vs Voluntary Chatbot Use: How It Shapes Customer Satisfaction and Blame

Leveraging AI in Customer Interfaces: Insights from Consumer Perception Research

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing customer interface through chatbots, voice assistants, and other conversational agents. As these technologies become more human-like in how they respond to our queries, even adapting to specific speaking styles, it becomes even more important to understand consumer perceptions and responses to these interactions. I want to share with your three papers … Continue reading Leveraging AI in Customer Interfaces: Insights from Consumer Perception Research

If the (self-service) technology broke it, the (self-service) technology should fix it

I have recently come across an interesting paper examining under what conditions customers preferred to interact with a human vs a non-human agent, after a failure with self-service technology (SST). That is, if a customer is using technology to perform a task (say, ordering something online), and something goes wrong, would customers prefer to be … Continue reading If the (self-service) technology broke it, the (self-service) technology should fix it

Dear ChatGPT, your answer is convincing but it is a complete fabrication

I have been spending some time exploring ChatGPT, the new AI powered, conversational chatbot, which is attracting a lot of attention for the range and the quality of its output. ChatGPT, by OpenAI, was launched at the end of November. It can do things as diverse as writing letters / e-mails, short answers, long articles … Continue reading Dear ChatGPT, your answer is convincing but it is a complete fabrication

Chatbots encourage customer misbehaviour

In the paper “Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning as business tools: factors influencing value creation and value destruction”, Fintan Clear and I argue that the often-repeated claim that AI solutions are “cheaper, faster, and less prone to mistakes than humans” reveals a narrow assessment of the costs associated with deploying an AI solution in an … Continue reading Chatbots encourage customer misbehaviour

Tales of developing an AI-powered chatbot

Chatbots are computer programmes designed to conduct conversations with humans about specific topics, through text, voice or touch. Because they can run 24/7, chatbots are becoming increasingly popular in situations where there are frequently asked questions which can be resolved from a limited pool of answers. Examples include accepting an order, updating the status of … Continue reading Tales of developing an AI-powered chatbot

Technological disruptions in services

When our fridge broke down, at the end of last month, the job of finding a replacement was made a lot easier by the existence of websites, and significantly more interesting by the existence of augmented reality. With the former, we could gather lots of information about each fridge’s features and their availability, which helped … Continue reading Technological disruptions in services

Slides from “Coping with chatbot service failure” talk

Here are the slides from my (online) talk at BML Munjal University, earlier this month. This talk draws on my work on identifying how artificial intelligence can destroy business value, and specifically the empirical work developed my doctoral student Daniela Castillo (paper here; discussion here and here). The talk was followed by a Q&A, where participants … Continue reading Slides from “Coping with chatbot service failure” talk

“Coping with chatbot service failure” webinar, 15th September, free

I am delivering a guest talk at BML Munjal University (India) on how customers react to failed service interactions with chatbots. Chatbots promise to deliver better customer experience through the collection and use of customer insight, and at a fraction of the cost of staff-based customer service. However, interactions with chatbots often fall below customer … Continue reading “Coping with chatbot service failure” webinar, 15th September, free

Perceived blame, matters

In customer service, things are bound to go wrong, at some point. When that happens, it is important to not only understand what went wrong, but also what is the perceived cause of the problem, because that impacts on the recovery strategy. Take interacting with a chatbot, for instance. As discussed in a previous … Continue reading Perceived blame, matters