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Emotional Communication Between Chatbots and Users: An Empirical Study on Online Customer Service System

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Artificial Intelligence in HCI (HCII 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 13336))

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Abstract

In a digital environment, chatbots act as customer service agents to assist consumers in making decisions. Improving the service efficiency of chatbots has aroused widespread concern in the industry and academia. Based on the computer as a social actor (CASA) and emotional contagion theory, this study explores the influence mechanism of quality assessment in the process of communication between users and human-machine customer service, investigates the relationship between chatbot performance and user perception, and constructs an assessment model for the quality of communication process. It adopts partial least squares (PLS) structural equation modelling (SEM) to evaluate the research model and hypothesis. Based on 163 samples, the results show that, in the process of communication, users’ perception of the robot’s ability, especially the accuracy and effectiveness of the robot, will significantly affect users’ evaluation of the quality of communication. At the same time, the language style of the chatbot has little impact on the evaluation of the quality of communication. The results of this study provide important insights into the rational use of human-computer interaction in e-commerce and lay a foundation for understanding the service mechanism and related theories of online service agents in artificial intelligence.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Insider, 2021, https://www.businessinsider.com/chatbot-market-stats-trends.

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Acknowledgments

The work described in this paper was supported by grants from the Zhejiang University of Technology Humanities and Social Sciences Pre-Research Fund Project (GZ21731320013), the Zhejiang University of Technology Subject Reform Project (GZ21511320030) and the Zhejiang Province Undergraduate Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program (S202110337116).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, China

    Qianwen Xu & Cong Cao

  2. University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia

    Jun Yan

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  1. Qianwen Xu
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  2. Jun Yan
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Correspondence to Cong Cao .

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  1. Siemens (United States), Princeton, NJ, USA

    Helmut Degen

  2. Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH), Heraklion, Crete, Greece

    Stavroula Ntoa

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Xu, Q., Yan, J., Cao, C. (2022). Emotional Communication Between Chatbots and Users: An Empirical Study on Online Customer Service System. In: Degen, H., Ntoa, S. (eds) Artificial Intelligence in HCI. HCII 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13336. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05643-7_33

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05643-7_33

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