Understanding and Improving Consumer Reactions to Service Bots

Abstract Many firms are beginning to replace customer service employees with bots, from humanoid robots digital chatbots. Using real human–bot interactions in lab and field settings, we study consumers’ evaluations of bot-provided service. We find that more negative when the provider is a bot versus human—even provided identical. This effect explained by belief automation motivated firm benefits (i.e., cutting costs) at expense (such as quality). The eliminated share economic surplus derived consumers through price discounts. reversed bots provide unambiguously superior human employees—a scenario may soon become reality. Consumers’ default reactions therefore largely but can be equal or better than providers if demonstrate how consumers.