The Influence of AI Chatbots on B2C Customer Service Benefits, Challenges, and Consumer Reactions
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| Dokumentumtípus: | Diplomadolgozat |
| Kulcsszavak: | 21th century big data customer service social change society |
| Online Access: | http://dolgozattar.uni-bge.hu/60144 |
| Kivonat: | In the recent years the technology of Artificial Intelligence (AI) went through great advancements, and became a widespread, everyday factor in our lives. This change is apparent in the Business-to-Customer (B2C) operations as well, as companies aim to quickly adopt this new technology to gain an upper hand in the market. However, many questions arise. Do chatbots and social media bots improve response times and service quality during B2C customer service interactions? What are the main advantages and disadvantages of using Artificial Intelligence (AI) based chat and social media bots to interact with the customers? How do consumers perceive the various interactions and encounters with AI based chatbots compared to human customer service agents, and how does this impact customer satisfaction and trust? How do AI based customer service and social media bots impact customer purchasing decision and engagement? What ethical and privacy concerns do the customers have regarding the usage of AI in customer service chatbots and social media bots? This thesis delves into these questions by gaining insight into the opinions of the customers. Due to the limitations of the research the thesis specifically chose AI based Customer Service chats and AI usage in Social Media as the target topic. This is done through extensive secondary research of the topic, which is further expanded by a quantitative and a qualitative primary research. The quantitative primary research, a questionnaire answered by 127 people of various ages and genders, aimed to provide numerical data to both the average and the extreme experiences of the customers, as well as to their opinions and concerns on the matter. The data gathered shows that consumers are generally not satisfied with most aspects of AI based Customer Service chatbots in their average encounters with it, while the extreme negative experiences reflected that these services can utterly fail to satisfy the customer needs at times. However, the research also showed that this tendency of total failure became less apparent in the recent years as the technology advanced. It also shows that AI are incapable of recreating human-like emotions or empathy, both in chat and on social media, often alienating the customers with this. Furthermore, customers have seriously negative opinions and concerns when it comes to the security of their private data in every encounter with AI and express a strong need for the labeling of AI contents. The qualitative data provides insight into the numbers, to understand the results of the quantitative data. Customers explain that the failure of the AI customer service often stems from its limitations to understand complex situations, or to admit and connect them to human customer service agents when they are unable to satisfy the customers’ needs. They explain what it is that makes AI generated chat or social media content so apparent and non-human, as well as why they want any AI generated content to be labelled as such. They provide insight into what they believe to be the future of the AI. In conclusion, the thesis finds that while AI can be a useful tool for companies, at the current level of technology it is better used as an extra tool instead of supplementation of humans in the communications. |
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