Chatbots Are Still Missing the Human Element of Conversation, Finds Strategy Analytics

Customers’ Emotions Have Significant Influence on Their Satisfaction with a Service Chatbot

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Strategy Analytics – The development of conversational agents or chatbots that can engage in empathetic conversation with ‘real people’ has long been a goal of artificial intelligence (AI). But the majority of current mainstream chatbots used to increase customer engagement and reduce costs, are inflexible, prescriptive and unable to work outside of their scope. The inability to express emotion, attitude, or opinion, especially if the chatbot cannot solve a customer’s problem, leads to user frustration and cessation of use.

Exploring key design implications for future chatbots by reviewing recent academic and industry research on conversational agents, a new report from the User Experience Strategies service at Strategy Analytics, “Conversational Agents: Update on Academic and Industry UX Research”, identifies a number of key areas for consideration in the design of future chatbots.

Commented Diane O'Neill, co-author and Director, UX Innovation Practice, “Research has shown that a customer’s emotions have significant influence on their satisfaction with a service chatbot. Consumer reaction to error is significantly influenced by perceived competence and trust. By designing systems that are user-centric and content driven, in addition to preventing recognized non-progress events from occurring, this will provide numerous benefits to the businesses using them.

Commented Kevin Nolan, VP, UX Innovation Practice, “But despite some successes in the development of empathetic chatbots, human-level intelligence is still not fully understood. Building intelligent social chatbots that can understand humans and their surrounding world requires further advances in AI particularly as their use diversifies into critical health related services such as mental health support systems.”

Source: Strategy Analytics, Inc.

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