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Faster Is Not Always Better: Understanding the Effect of Dynamic Response Delays in Human-Chatbot Interaction

Gnewuch, Ulrich 1; Morana, Stefan 1; Adam, Marc T. P.; Maedche, Alexander 1
1 Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)

Abstract:

A key challenge in designing conversational user interfaces is to make the conversation between the user and the system feel natural and human-like. In order to increase perceived humanness, many systems with conversational user interfaces (e.g., chatbots) use response delays to simu-late the time it would take humans to respond to a message. However, delayed responses may also negatively impact user satisfaction, particularly in situations where fast response times are expected, such as in customer service. This paper reports the findings of an online experiment in a customer service context that investigates how user perceptions differ when interacting with a chatbot that sends dynamically delayed responses compared to a chatbot that sends near-instant responses. The dynamic delay length was calculated based on the complexity of the re-sponse and complexity of the previous message. Our results indicate that dynamic response de-lays not only increase users’ perception of humanness and social presence, but also lead to greater satisfaction with the overall chatbot interaction. Building on social response theory, we provide evidence that a chatbot’s response time represents a social cue that triggers social re-sponses shaped by social expectations. ... mehr


Scopus
Zitationen: 76
Zugehörige Institution(en) am KIT Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaften – Institut für Informationswirtschaft und Marketing (IISM)
Publikationstyp Proceedingsbeitrag
Publikationsjahr 2018
Sprache Englisch
Identifikator KITopen-ID: 1000089970
Erschienen in 26th European Conference on Information Systems: Beyond Digitization - Facets of Socio-Technical Change, ECIS 2018, Portsmouth, UK, June 23-28, 2018. Ed.: U. Frank
Veranstaltung 26th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2018), Portsmouth, Vereinigtes Königreich, 23.06.2018 – 28.06.2018
Seiten Code 143975
Schlagwörter Chatbot, response delay, social cue, perceived humanness, social presence
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