Conversational Breakdown in a Customer Service Chatbot: Impact of Task Order and Criticality on User Trust and Emotion

While chatbots are increasingly used for customer service, there is a knowledge gap concerning the impact of Conversational Breakdown in such chatbot interactions. In a 2 x 4 factorial design online experiment, we studied how Conversational Breakdown impacts user emotion and trust in a chatbot for customer service, given variations in task criticality and breakdown task order. Here, 257 participants were randomly assigned to complete high- or low-criticality tasks with a prototype chatbot for customer service, experiencing Conversational Breakdown for the first, second, third or none of their tasks. The task set was decided from a 63-participant pre-study. We found significant impact of Conversational Breakdown, including a marked order effect on overall trust, as well as a bounce-back effect on task-specific trust and emotion after subsequent successful task completion. We found no post-interaction effect of Task Criticality. Based on our findings, we discuss theoretical and practical implications and suggest future research.