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A Framework and Content Analysis of Social Cues in the Introductions of Customer Service Chatbots

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Book cover Chatbot Research and Design (CONVERSATIONS 2022)

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Abstract

Organizations are increasingly implementing chatbots to address customers’ inquiries, but customers still have unsatisfactory encounters with them. In order to successfully deploy customer service chatbots, it is important for organizations and designers to understand how to introduce them to customers. Arguably, how a chatbot introduces itself as well as its services might influence customers’ perceptions about the chatbot. Therefore, a framework was developed to annotate the social cues in chatbot introductions. In order to validate our framework, we conducted a content analysis of introductions of customer service chatbots (n = 88). The results showed that the framework turned out to be a reliable identification instrument. Moreover, the most prevalent social cue in chatbot introductions was a humanlike avatar, whereas communication cues, indicating the chatbot’s functionalities, hardly occurred. The paper ends with implications for the design of chatbot introductions and possibilities for future research.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Louise Braat, Boet Bruijniks, Myrthe Jagers, Marco Krijthe, and Sammie Smaak for collecting and coding the sample. This research is part of the NWO-funded project ‘Smooth Operators: development and effects of personalized conversational AI’, grant no: KIVI.2019.009.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Utrecht University, Trans 10, 3512 JK, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Charlotte van Hooijdonk & Gabriëlla Martijn

  2. Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Christine Liebrecht

Authors
  1. Charlotte van Hooijdonk
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  2. Gabriëlla Martijn
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  3. Christine Liebrecht
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Charlotte van Hooijdonk .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. SINTEF, Oslo, Norway

    Asbjørn Følstad

  2. University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Theo Araujo

  3. CERTH-ITI, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Symeon Papadopoulos

  4. Durham University, Durham, UK

    Effie L.-C. Law

  5. University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Ewa Luger

  6. University of Agder, Grimstad, Norway

    Morten Goodwin

  7. University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Petter Bae Brandtzaeg

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van Hooijdonk, C., Martijn, G., Liebrecht, C. (2023). A Framework and Content Analysis of Social Cues in the Introductions of Customer Service Chatbots. In: Følstad, A., et al. Chatbot Research and Design. CONVERSATIONS 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13815. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25581-6_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25581-6_8

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