The dark side of AI-powered service interactions: exploring the process of co-destruction from the customer perspective

ABSTRACT

Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbots are changing the nature of service interfaces from being human-driven to technology-dominant. As a result, customers are expected to resolve issues themselves before reaching out to customer service representatives, ultimately becoming a central element of service production as co-creators of value. However, AI-powered interactions can also fail, potentially leading to anger, confusion, and customer dissatisfaction. We draw on the value co-creation literature to investigate the process of co-destruction in AI-powered service interactions. We adopt an exploratory approach based on in-depth interviews with 27 customers who have interacted with AI-powered chatbots in customer service settings. We find five antecedents of failed interactions between customers and chatbots: authenticity issues, cognition challenges, affective issues, functionality issues, and integration conflicts. We observe that although customers do accept part of the responsibility for co-destruction, they largely attribute the problems they experience to resource misintegration by service providers. Our findings contribute a better understanding of value co-destruction in AI-powered service settings and provide a richer conceptualization of the link between customer resource loss, attributions of resource loss, and subsequent customer coping strategies. Our findings also offer service managers insights into how to avoid and mitigate value co-destruction in AI service settings.

摘要

基于人工智能(AI)的聊天机器人正在改变服务的本质，使其从依赖人类转变为基于技术。在与客服代表联系之前，期待客户能够作为价值共创者自己解决问题，最终成为服务生产的核心要素。然而，基于人工智能的交互也可能失效，潜在地导致客户愤怒和不满。我们借鉴了价值共创的文献来研究基于人工智能的服务交互中价值共毁的过程。我们采用了一种探索性的方法，对27名客户进行了深入访谈，这些客户在客户服务中与人工智能聊天机器人进行了交互。我们发现了互动失败的五个前因后果:真实性问题、认知挑战、情感问题、功能问题和整合冲突。虽然客户确实承担了价值共毁的部分责任，但他们很大程度上将问题归咎于服务提供商的资源整合不当。我们的发现有助于更好地理解基于人工智能的服务中所存在的价值共毁，并为客户资源损失、资源损失的归因和客户应对策略之间的联系提供了更丰富的概念模型。我们的发现为服务管理者提供了如何避免和降低人工智能服务中价值共毁的深刻见解。

KEYWORDS:

• Value co-destruction
• customer resource loss
• Artificial intelligence
• automated service interactions
• chatbots
• service robots
• value co-creation

关键词:

• 价值共毁
• 客户资源流失
• 人工智能
• 自动化服务交互
• 聊天机器人
• 服务机器人
• 价值共创

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the interviewees who participated in this study, as well as the reviewers and the attendees who provided feedback during the AIRSI 2019 conference: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in Service Interactions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).