Xu Ying, Zhang Jianyu, Deng Guangkuan
School of Economics and Management, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang, China.
School of Business Administration, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, China.
Front Psychol. 2022 Jul 22;13:902782. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.902782. eCollection 2022.
Chatbots are increasingly occupying the online retailing landscape, and the volume of consumer-chatbot service interactions is exploding. Even so, it still remains unclear how chatbots should communicate with consumers to ensure positive customer service experiences and, in particular, to improve their satisfaction. A fundamental decision in this regard is the choice of a communication style, specifically, whether a social-oriented or a task-oriented communication style should be best used for chatbots. In this paper, we investigate how using a social-oriented versus task-oriented communication style can improve customer satisfaction. Two experimental studies reveal that using a social-oriented communication style boosts customer satisfaction. Warmth perception of the chatbot mediates this effect, while consumer attachment anxiety moderates these effects. Our results indicate that social-oriented communication style can be beneficial in enhancing service satisfaction for highly anxiously attached customers, but it does not work for the lowly anxiously attached. This study provides theoretical and practical implications about how to implement chatbots in service encounters.
聊天机器人正日益占据在线零售领域，消费者与聊天机器人服务的交互量正在激增。即便如此，聊天机器人应如何与消费者沟通以确保积极的客户服务体验，尤其是提高他们的满意度，仍不明朗。在这方面的一个基本决策是沟通风格的选择，具体而言，对于聊天机器人来说，是采用面向社交的沟通风格还是面向任务的沟通风格最为合适。在本文中，我们研究了采用面向社交与面向任务的沟通风格如何能够提高客户满意度。两项实验研究表明，采用面向社交的沟通风格能提升客户满意度。对聊天机器人的温暖感知在这一效应中起中介作用，而消费者依恋焦虑则调节这些效应。我们的结果表明，面向社交的沟通风格对高度焦虑依恋的客户提高服务满意度有益，但对低度焦虑依恋的客户则不起作用。本研究为如何在服务接触中应用聊天机器人提供了理论和实践意义。
