Research On The Influence Of Chatbot Voice’s Simulation Degree On Customer Service Experience

Intelligent chatbot has become an important carrier to connect companies with consumers.More and more companies employed intelligent chatbot to reduce the cost of staff service.How to reduce the costs and increase efficiency while optimizing customer service experience is facing big challenges.As a key link of customer service experience,the voice level of intelligent chatbot has become an important indicator to measure the service quality of companies.We conducted three studies to verify the influence of intelligent chatbot voice’s simulation degree on customer service experience.At the same time,we also examined the serial mediation effect of perceived empathy and trust and the moderation effect of situational sensitivity.Study 1 employed a 2(voice simulation degree: high vs.low)between-subjects design under the scenario of financial products marketing to preliminarily prove the influence of intelligent chatbot voice’s simulation degree on customer service experience.On the basis of study 1,study 2 eliminated the interference of intelligent chatbot’s gender by changing the female voice into male’s.We also measured the influence of intelligent chatbot voice’s simulation degree on customer service experience under the scenario of hotel reservation service.The results supported the main effect and the serial mediation effect of our research again.In Study 3,the related concepts of situational sensitivity and "Uncanny Valley" theory were introduced in the experimental scenario of phone recharge.This study employed a 2(voice simulation degree: high vs.low)× 2(situational sensitivity: high vs.low)between-group design to explore the boundary conditions of the main effect.The results suggested that under low sensitivity,compared with the scenario of high situational sensitivity,consumers have higher evaluation on the service experience brought by intelligent chatbot with higher voice’s simulation degree.Instead,the situation will be reversed in the scenario of lower situational sensitivity.That is,consumers have higher evaluation on the service experience brought by intelligent chatbot with lower voice’s simulation degree.This paper explored the mediating mechanism and boundary conditions of chatbot voice’s simulation degree on customer service experience and confirmed the influence of chatbot voice on consumers’ psychological perception excluding the interference of visual clues,which enriched the research in the field of artificial intelligence marketing.In addition,our research proved the moderation effect of situational sensitivity through one2 × 2 between-group design,in which we extended the "Uncanny Valley" theory in the field of human-computer interaction from the visual level to auditory level.All of these expanded the applicable conditions and the scope of the "Uncanny Valley" theory.In conclusion,we provided theoretical evidence for companies to achieve efficient allocation between two kinds of chatbot voice’s simulation degrees under the specific human-computer interaction scenarios,so as to be better served for consumers.Thus,companies may benefit from our practical implications to develop a good corporate reputation and image.