Purpose

Chatbots are increasingly used in online retail settings and are becoming a powerful tool for brands to engage customers. However, consumers’ satisfaction with these chatbots is mixed. Thus, this paper aims to investigate how using a social- versus task-oriented anthropomorphic communication style can improve customer satisfaction.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors explore the link between the anthropomorphic communication style use and customer perceptions/customer satisfaction in online customer service interactions. Two experiment scenarios were developed to test these links.

Findings

Overall, using a social-oriented communication style boosts customer satisfaction. Warmth perception of the chatbot mediates this effect, while chatbot’s anthropomorphised role (servant versus partner) moderates this effect.

Originality/value

This paper enriches the bilateral communication literature by extending the investigation on communication style effects to chatbot service interactions and revealing the psychological process driving the impacts. It also adds to the existing literature on chatbots as a customer service and contributes to the prominent topic examining how consumers react to artificial intelligence that is used to establish and maintain a relationship with them. Additionally, the authors also make contribution to the warmth and competence literature by demonstrating that customers can interpret social cues in chatbot service interactions mainly based on the warmth dimension. Thus, the authors further add to the growing chatbot humanness perception literature and respond to the calls for investigating more anthropomorphic design cues to enhance chatbot humanness. Finally, the authors also provide a way to help reconcile seemingly conflicting prior findings.

中文翻译：

---

通过聊天机器人提高客户满意度：拟人化沟通方式和拟人化角色的影响

目的

聊天机器人越来越多地用于在线零售环境，并正在成为品牌吸引客户的强大工具。然而，消费者对这些聊天机器人的满意度参差不齐。因此，本文旨在研究使用面向社会与面向任务的拟人化沟通方式如何提高客户满意度。

设计/方法/途径

作者探讨了在线客户服务交互中拟人化沟通方式的使用与客户感知/客户满意度之间的联系。开发了两个实验场景来测试这些链接。

发现

总的来说，使用面向社会的沟通方式可以提高客户满意度。聊天机器人的温暖感知调节了这种效果，而聊天机器人的拟人化角色（仆人与伙伴）缓和了这种效果。

原创性/价值

本文通过将对沟通方式影响的调查扩展到聊天机器人服务交互并揭示驱动影响的心理过程，丰富了双边沟通文献。它还增加了关于聊天机器人作为客户服务的现有文献，并有助于研究消费者如何对用于与他们建立和维持关系的人工智能做出反应的突出主题。此外，作者还通过证明客户可以主要基于温暖维度来解释聊天机器人服务交互中的社交线索，从而对温暖和能力文献做出了贡献。因此，作者进一步增加了不断增长的聊天机器人人性感知文献，并回应了调查更多拟人化设计线索以增强聊天机器人人性的呼吁。