Utilizing Artificial Intelligence-Powered Chatbots for Enhanced Customer Support in Online Retail

In many e-commerce contexts, live chat interfaces have become popular as a way to communicate with consumers and provide real-time customer support. Conversational software agents, commonly known as Chatbots, are systems created to converse with users in natural language and are often based on artificial intelligence (AI). These systems have replaced human chat service agents in many cases. Although AI -based Chatbots have been widely used due to their time and cost savings, they have not yet met consumer expectations, which may make users less likely to comply with chatbot requests. We empirically study, through a randomized online experiment, the impact of verbal humanoid design cues and a direct approach on compliance with user requirements, based on Social Reactions and Attachment Commitment Theory. Our results show that consumers are more likely to cooperate with chatbot service response requests when there is humanity and consistency. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that social presence plays a mediating role between humanoid design cues and user compliance.