Emojional intelligence? The role of the pleading face emoji in chatbot complaint handling
Keywords
Loading...
Authors
Issue Date
2024-06-26
Language
en
Document type
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Title
ISSN
Volume
Issue
Startpage
Endpage
DOI
Abstract
In today's digital era, chatbots are becoming prominent in customer service, including online
complaint handling. Despite their benefits, chatbots often lack emotional intelligence, resulting
in lower customer satisfaction. This study investigates whether a pleading face emoji can
improve perceived firm sincerity, perceived firm empathy and perceived emotional
intelligence. The findings indicate that chatbots are generally perceived as less sincere,
empathetic and emotionally intelligent than human service providers. In addition, the use of
the pleading face emoji leads to mixed results: it enhances the perceived firm empathy and
most likely the perceived emotional intelligence, but it diminishes the perceived firm sincerity.
These findings suggest that strategies effective in human interaction (e.g. use of pleading face
emoji) may not be as effective when interacting with a chatbot. Moreover, it is found that older
people experience more perceived firm sincerity, perceived firm empathy, and perceived
emotional intelligence. This research provides valuable insights for firms into the design of
chatbots and the use of the pleading face emoji in chatbot complaint handling.
Description
Citation
Supervisor
Faculty
Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen