Trust me, I’m a chatbot

In this research study, the test subjects chatted with a chatbot - but only half of them knew that it was a non-human conversation partner. Photo: Mozafari Göttingen researchers investigate effect of non-human conversation partners in customer services   More and more companies are using chatbots in customer services. Due to advances in artificial intelligence and natural language processing, chatbots are often indistinguishable from humans when it comes to communication. But should companies let their customers know that they are communicating with machines and not with humans? Researchers at the University of Göttingen investigated. Their research found that consumers tend to react negatively when they learn that the person they are talking to is, in fact, a chatbot. However, if the chatbot makes mistakes and cannot solve a customer's problem, the disclosure triggers a positive reaction. The results of the study were published in the Journal of Service Management.