AICTE sponsored National conference on “Artificial Intelligence in Marketing” 2020 PSNA College of Engineering
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chatbots revolutionizing the customer support
service: An Overview of theories and Literature
Abilash, Nitha Siju
ABSTRACT
Purpose of the Study: The aim of this study is to investigate about how artificial intelligence has
ventured in business and explore on its evolution in customer support service.
Methodology: This study is explored with theoretical information referring with up to date
literature from different sources such reputed journals, news articles and other viable areas.
Findings: Researcher has observed from study before deploying chatbots in organization
permanently, need some periodical monitoring about the process does it resolve customer queries
promptly and collect regular feedback from their customer about their perception.
Applications of this study: This research will provide some basic information on artificial
Intelligence and its origin in digital marketing emphasising with chatbots technology.
Novelty of the Study: Researcher has focussed with revolution of artificial intelligence and its
significant role in shaping chatbots technology and how it contributes in customer support service
utilising natural language processing.
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Chatbots technology, Natural language processing, Customer
Support service, Revolution
INTRODUCTION
Globally Artificial Intelligence (AI) is ubiquitous and it has accelerated with digitalization of
processes and activities among many organizations by increasing their capabilities. In terms of
corporate language, chatbots technology is a part of human robot interactions which offers with
various opportunities and support firms to discover better insights and provides a better platform
for good decision making. (Salla Syvanen & Chiara Valentini, 2020) Nowadays, facing
challenges and risks are quite common in business both internally and externally. In order to
compete in new era, firms create good relationship between customers by providing an efficient
service in terms of verbal or physical depends on the affordable product. Focussing on improving
customer experience as high, continual advancements in technology are incorporated to provide
better response time and increased quality of interaction. (Kathleen Walch, 2019) Chatbot can
identify consumer needs easily once when they started interacting with AI powered bots and
proactively start conversation with them by providing relevant information throughout the entire
chats and it can transfer a caller to service agent if a human is necessary in the loop. Natural
Language processing (NLP) will apply algorithms to extract unstructured language data in proper
format which computers can understand. Significantly, the techniques which used by NLP are
AICTE sponsored National conference on “Artificial Intelligence in Marketing” 2020 PSNA College of Engineering
Syntactic analysis and Semantic analysis to complete language processing tasks. Some of Syntax
techniques are Lemmatization, Morphological Segmentation, Word Segmentation, Part-of-speech
tagging, Parsing, Sentence breaking, and Stemming. Meanwhile, Semantic techniques are Named
entity recognition, Word sense disambiguation, and Natural language generation. (Michael J.
Garbade 2018)
Our paper based on five sections, first, initiated with Introduction of Artificial intelligence,
following with literature review about chatbots and its revolution. Section 3 discusses about
methodology aspects. Section 4 highlights with results and implications of chatbots technology.
Finally, the paper ends with conclusions and limitation of this study
LITERATURE REVIEW
The chatbot is a conversational agent that reproduces the conversation with customers, usually
over the internet. They communicate with human users, especially the end-users, through
messages via texts and reply accordingly. Even though the technological concept of interacting
with the customers is not new, the design of chatbots was made by considering various
assumptions. The artificial intelligence developed in the past tends to answer one-liner questions
and could not answer any other conversation with the users.
Firstly, the chatbot was designed to have a limited domain knowledge as one can talk about any
topic with the customers. Chatbots are designed to focus on specific issues. By the end of every
conversation, the customers want to achieve a particular result. This will have an impact on the
flow of the conversation. The designers of chatbots can exploit this as some behavioral patterns
will arise as a result. By 2010, various assistants like Apple, Siri, Cortana, and Alexa came into
the market that dealt with a dual conversation with a goal-oriented dialog. The release of
messenger for Facebook is another breakthrough and allowed the agents to discuss non-AI related
companies. Chatbots include working with multiple components. When chatbots are receiving a
new message, the language identification module will first process the message. The new message
and its language, along with any previous conversation, will be retrieved and fed into the classifier
module, which will imply the message the user is trying to convey. This will then be used to
decide the action sequence. For example, the chatbot reply will be in the form of whether the
message is not clear. The proper execution of the situation happens with the module known as an
action handler.
The two main principles to guarantee appropriate interaction between humans and computer are
Visibility and affordance.
AICTE sponsored National conference on “Artificial Intelligence in Marketing” 2020 PSNA College of Engineering
According to a Harvard Business Review research, 39% of global firms are using Artificial
Intelligence Technologies to improve the brand experience (Wilson et al., 2017). Chatbots or a
conversational agent is one of the artificial intelligence used by organizations. The organization
can initiate the interaction by giving the information, or the customer can start the conversation.
Real-time data is provided in response to the customers' questions (Vandolen et al., 2007).In
1950, an English computer scientist Alan Turing mentioned the first question related to chatbots,”
Can machines think.” According to Valverde (2018), ELIZA is the first chatbot. ELIZA, the first
chatbot, was framed with the health care sector as the customers as helps in conversations related
to therapy (Weizenbaum, 1966).
Another prominent example of the use of chatbots in healthcare is “Your.MD” which is an
Artificial Intelligence software designed to give more information to patients and lead them right
to the appropriate healthcare professionals. Subway is another significant example of the
application of chatbots in the food industry. They have used chatbots to provide a platform for
easy customer orders, whereas the hotel Marriott International uses the chatbot for recruitment
purposes. Lester et al. (2004) cited that chatbots can be used for five major business applications.
Firstly, customer service helps in interacting with the customer to facilitate them regarding the
products and services. Secondly, help desk facilities by appropriately giving responses to the
questions of the customers. Website navigation is another primary business application directing
users through complex websites. Another business application is selling with appropriate
guidance, which will help the customers make relevant buying patterns. Lastly, providing proper
support for technical issues. According to the researcher, there are two deployments related to
chatbots for business organizations: customer-facing and internal facing. In the first one,
customer-facing, direct interaction with the customer can be seen, which will help obtain answers
to their questions. In contrast, in the internal-facing deployment, chatbot use for internal functions
like training the customer's service employees can be seen.
Customer experience
According to Homburg et al. (2017), customer experience involves evolving the sensory,
affective, cognitive, relational, and behavioral responses to an organization through various
processes like purchase, repurchase, and post-purchase. These types of brand responses tend to
create contacts directly initiated by the customer and unplanned indirect contacts through
advertising, word of mouth, criticisms, etc. (Schwager & Meyer, 2007). According to Verhoef et
al. (2009), satisfaction, trust, intention to revisit and repurchase, and customer loyalty can be
obtained through a positive customer experience. An emotional tie can be generated between the
AICTE sponsored National conference on “Artificial Intelligence in Marketing” 2020 PSNA College of Engineering
brand and the customer through customer experience. Grönroos & Voima(2013)cited that because
of the advancements in technology, a high degree of expectation is there from the side of the
customers in the online environment, and they tend to expect a high service level as well. Due to
this, the organizations are forced to invest more in managing customer experience to provide a
better service to the customers in the online environment. According to Novak et al. (2000), online
customer experience is defined as the cognitive state in nature experienced during navigation. The
researchers have impacted four variables on online customer experience: skill, telepresence,
interactive speed, and challenge. The conceptualization of the affective state of online customer
experience was later studied by the researchers (Rose et al., 2012). Concerning the affective state
of the customer mind, perceived control, Aesthetics, and perceived benefits were introduced,
whereas the speed of interaction and skill are not considered in this study. The reason behind this
is explained through another research done by Novak et al. (2000), as there is always a high speed
in the interaction of the websites, and the skills can be achieved over time. Both cognitive and
affective ways of customer engagement result in the dispensation of sensory information (Martin
et al.,2015; Rose et al., 2012).The customer’s subjective and psychological response in a
multidimensional perspective regarding an online product’s presentation can be observed through
online customer experience (Bleier al.,2019)
The above research includes the social and sensory context apart from the cognitive and affective
dimensions. Bleier et al. (2019) cited and defined the four dimensions. According to him, the
cognitive dimension is the amount of resourceful and useful information provided to the
customers by the website, which will help the customers to make purchase decisions (Lim & Ting,
2012). According to Verhoef et al. (2009), the value of customer experience can be seen from the
websites' information. He cited the ability of technology for customer engagement on a social
level, which is the concept of Automation Social presence (ASP). ASP is the concept in which the
machines make the consumers feel that they are in an organization. According to Wang et al.
(2007), the pleasure of online shopping can be increased using social presence.
Customer Service-Evolution
The customers made a face to face communication with the organization before 1995.
Communication over long-distance took place through phone.97% of customer service
interactions were through telephone by 1997 (Lubbe, 2003). Customers used to call the company
when they dealt with an issue or a problem. Due to this, telephonic skills are considered to be one
of the major skills required by the customer service representatives at that time. When the internet
came into prominence, other forms of customer service patterns came into existence. This includes
AICTE sponsored National conference on “Artificial Intelligence in Marketing” 2020 PSNA College of Engineering
e-mails, frequently asked questions, co-browsing, and video conferencing. Live chat came into
prominence next. Two or more people can communicate by sending messages using live chats.
The chat users can start a conversation where they wish to begin with, but it is not feasible to
immediately respond as the logs of chats are stored and referred to in the future. Another
advantage of online chats is that it is very informal in nature; it will encourage spontaneity and
reduce the resistance for communicating effectively (Chakrabarti, 2012). As per Gartner (2012),
the current and potential customers are free to share with the customer service representatives
regarding their queries related to products and services. Mobile applications were widely used in
the customer service arena by 2008. Appropriate feedback tools were built-in with these
applications to measure customer satisfaction as well (Stanley, 2014).
Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction can be viewed concerning two different versions: the customers' overall
satisfaction and the satisfaction of the customers related to the transactions made with the
organizations. Johnson and Fornell (1991) have defined overall satisfaction as the customers'
evaluation of the organization's performance to date. The satisfaction related to transactions is
considered as an emotional response of the customer related to the latest transactions made with
the organization .Customer satisfaction depends on responsiveness, waiting time, ease of use, and
usefulness when the customers’ need support. While reliability, empathy, and information quality
are considered when the customers are looking for support in making decisions.
Opportunities
Permanent availability is one of the major advantages of chatbots. All the time, it is available
online and is able to handle customer complaints appropriately. Individual attention and quick
response are expected from the customer when dealing with a query to an organization satisfied by
chatbots. This is because of its vast knowledge and availability. The problem of the waiting queue
is also not there when using chatbots as it is capable of handling limitless queries at the same time.
According to McCall (2017), it is better to make the customers know that they are communicating
with software rather than hiding the crucial fact from them. Chatbots replaces frequently asked
questions and is no longer needed as appropriate automization is happening with the chatbots and
immediately responds to the customers. Even the return process is handled by the chatbots,
reducing the number of human resources in an organization (Jain, 2016). By 2022, due to
chatbots, the annual saving is expected to be more than 8 billion dollars (Fakhruddin, 2017).
According to Jani(2016), chatbot's main advantages include convenience, cost-saving, and
maximum engagement with customers.
AICTE sponsored National conference on “Artificial Intelligence in Marketing” 2020 PSNA College of Engineering
METHODOLOGY
This paper is explored theoretically based on existing literature about Artificial intelligence
powered chatbots and its revolution in customer support service. Research paper which related to
artificial intelligence and how it empowers with advanced technology in shaping chatbots to
mould business process better by providing solution for customer queries and other attributes
related to digital marketing concept paper were analysed. Researcher has chosen with qualitative
analysis by collecting necessary information connected with chatbots revolution in customer
service from various journals, articles and other viable database.
DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS
Currently, the evolution of marketing has reached its point, which adopt digital trends and
advanced technologies in its day to day operation and it is inevitable. Automated applications and
other related system are highly relied on artificial intelligence by curtail its complexity of
customization processes. (Dan Dumitriu & Mirona 2020). Meanwhile there are some
complicated cases also can met during while adopting artificial intelligence. In sales process, AI
agent will monitors tele-conversations in real time using advanced voice analysis capabilities and
perhaps might able to conclude from customer’s tone that some issue are not been solved by
agent, AI can take charge of identify issues and support directly with customer through by
interaction, but if the customer feel discomfort to chat against AI bots can trigger with some
negative consequences. (Davenport et al 2019) Some online retailers can predict customer needs
with multiple products which have with same features, but not the exact one which was assumed
by customer to buy and this can lead them to return the product feels with dissatisfied and retailers
marketing strategies get transformed. (Agarwal et al. 2018: Gans et al 2017) Therefore adopting
AI adopted bots has enough challenges and risk, where the e-commerce who highly relying on
these technologies should understand these issues and finds viable solution before adopting digital
marketing in their business.
CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we discussed about artificial intelligence powered chatbots and how it minimizes
human interference with the use of device. In terms of entity aspect, AI powered chatbots does
have an opportunity to enhance information through by it analysis, but more research need to be
done and observe about the flow of communication process internally and externally. Deploying
chatbots in organization should monitor the customer interaction precisely, whether their query is
AICTE sponsored National conference on “Artificial Intelligence in Marketing” 2020 PSNA College of Engineering
been resolved or still it remain periodically by providing with some feedback sheet to customer
and analyse their responses. Ethical issues can also arise due to some customer might feel with
they are interacting to humans and if they realise their conversations were AI powered chatbots,
some of them will feel discomfort about their concerns are still not received to human agents and
they will be in dilemma whether the issue will get resolved or not.
LIMITATIONS
The primary limitation of this research is analysed only with qualitative data based on the
literature review available from the journals and other sources. Since the research is getting
updated periodically, the provided information might not remain same.
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