Chatbots are increasingly serving as the first point of contact between customers and companies. However, customers often miss the personal touch when interacting with chatbots. For this reason, many companies equip their chatbots with artificial empathy to provide a remedy to this issue. Artificial empathy describes the ability of AI-based chatbots to respond to customers with empathic statements. In two studies, we show that artificial empathy can increase customer satisfaction by making customers perceive the chatbot as warmer than non-empathic chatbots. However, we also find that empathic chatbots induce lower customer satisfaction in interactions with unexpected transactional elements, such as upselling, as compared to service interactions with expected transactional elements. This boundary condition shows that the positive influence of artificial empathy is context-dependent and that companies should use it with caution, depending on the use case. Our findings encourage further research on the boundary conditions of artificial empathy.
Dieser Eintrag ist Teil der Universitätsbibliographie.
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