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Naim Zierau
Title
Dr.
Last Name
Zierau
First name
Naim
Email
naim.zierau@unisg.ch
Phone
+41 71 224 3237
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PublicationBots at the Frontlines: Insights on How Conversational Interfaces Shape User Experience and Service OutcomesConversational Interfaces (CIs) transform how users interact with firms across a wide range of service interactions. Based on continuous advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP), CIs allow firms to automate customer engagement with users still experiencing the dynamic of human interaction, almost as if they were talking to a service employee. From assisting users in filing insurance claims to providing product recommendations, CIs increasingly support users in solving service requests more intuitive and natural than traditional service technologies (e.g., websites). Following a novel interaction paradigm, CIs mimic a human conversation style in either written or spoken form. All this allows CIs to interact with users in what was previously considered a hallmark of human communication: natural language-based dialogue. This raises fundamental questions about how users respond to CI-facilitated service interactions and the downstream consequences on service outcomes. This dissertation's overarching contribution is a novel framework of CI-facilitated service interactions, building on and integrating fundamental theories of human communication, technology-mediated service delivery, and the emerging work on human-AI relationships. The framework is developed and tested in six complementary paper projects. In combination, these papers demonstrate how CIs and their design (i.e., voice gender, interaction modality) fundamentally affect user experiences (i.e., trust, flow, fluency) and, ultimately, related service outcomes. Further, they assess how moderating factors manifested in the conversational design of CIs influence these effects. Considering these contributions, this dissertation has important implications for both research and practice: From a theoretical perspective, this dissertation shows how fundamental insights from human communication can be harnessed to advance the emerging and interdisciplinary research on how users relate to and are influenced by CIs in service interactions. The findings of this dissertation, likewise, have important practical implications for firms that aim to leverage the potential of CIs to improve user experiences and the theory-driven conversational design of CIs.Type: doctoral thesis