Anthropomorphizing IQ and EQ of Chatbots for Service Recovery—The Role of Deception and Smooth Talk on Chatbot Aversion

Despite the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), AI-based chatbots cannot avoid service failure, which stimulates chatbot aversion in users. Practically, anthropomorphizing IQ or EQ is widely employed to improve user experience and mitigate chatbot aversion. In terms of chatbot IQ, deception is benchmarking intelligence, which means when encountering unknown problems, chatbots use available information to generate an answer. When it comes to chatbot EQ, smooth talk is a typical strategy where the charming and flattering words of chatbots soothe users’ possible negative emotions in service failure. Drawing on the Uncanny Valley Effect, we propose the impacts of chatbot deception and smooth talk on user aversion via perceived affinity and eeriness. An online experiment is scheduled to test the research model. Chatbots with(out) deception and smooth talk have been designed, and a pilot study was conducted to confirm the effective manipulation.