Digital Automation of Customer Contact Processes – an Empirical Research on Customer Acceptance of different Chatbot Use-cases

Today’s economy is characterized by accelerated technological change which increases the automation of processes in companies. At the same time customers increasingly expect easy and quick customer service at all times. Chatbots are one technology that can help to fulfill these needs by using process automation and thus can create a competitive advantage. While chatbots have a huge potential, an important question, which needs to be addressed in this context is in which situations chatbots can be used most effectively. This study takes up this question and indicates in which contact processes chatbots are useful from a customer’s point of view. An experiment with 30 students was conducted to test and evaluate chatbots from different application areas. The analysis of the results shows that the participants perceive chatbots as easy to use and fast but that their trust in the technology’s data security is one main reason for resistance. In sum, chatbots are suitable for providing quick answers to simple questions. For processing complex, intimate or costly requests, human employees are favored.