Business chatbots for customer service : analysing their impact on companies and their reception by users

Details

Supervisors

De Cock, Sylvie ; François, Thomas

Faculty

Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres

Degree label

Master [120] en communication multilingue

Abstract

enAbstract The nature of interactions between customers and companies is constantly evolving through time and technological improvements. Over the past few years, chatbots (automatised conversational agents) have been increasingly used by companies in the context of customer service and their implications with regard to business/customer relationship and communication are being more and more discussed. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the impact of customer service chatbots on companies in Belgium as well as the choices regarding chatbot design and to assess the experience of Belgian users with regard to their interaction with a chatbot. By means of a quantitative analysis, company representatives were asked to evaluate the impact of their company’s chatbot in terms of use, customer satisfaction and profits and to answer questions with relation to the chatbot personality. Secondly, a qualitative and quantitative survey involving a simulation experiment was spread among 20 Belgian citizens and aimed to have feedback on their experience by means of five elements: previous experience with chatbots, satisfaction, attitude, motivational and demotivational factors and perception of chatbots as the future of communication. The findings show that chatbots have an average impact on companies and that in general, little attention is paid to the creation of a chatbot personality among the companies under study. Regarding Belgian users, their overall experience with customer chatbots is rather positive and they generally believe that chatbots could be the future of communication if used as alternative tools to existing solutions.