When chatbots fail - exploring customer responsibility attributions of co-created service failures : an abstract

Abstract

Extant literature has predominantly viewed value co-creation as a voluntary process of value creation between the customer and the service provider (e.g. Grissemann & Stokburger-Sauer, 2012; Sugathan, Ranjan, & Mulky, 2017). However, the customer may not always enter into the value co-creation process voluntarily. As chatbots are increasingly replacing traditional customer service options (Belanche, Casaló, Flavián, & Schepers, 2020), customers may find themselves in situations where they are forced to use automated technologies (Reinders, Frambach, & Kleijnen, 2015). Indeed, several service providers have started to offer chatbots as the only customer solution, especially as the first point of contact for customer service queries (Forrester, 2017). Such cases, where the customer does not have a choice as to whether to interact with a chatbot or a human representative, represent instances of mandatory customer participation (Dong & Sivakumar, 2017; Tsai, Wu, & Huang, 2017). [excerpt].