“I want to talk to a human!” – Perceived Humanness Increases Satisfaction with an AI-driven Customer Service Chatbot

Customer service chatbots have massively benefitted from the introduction of generative artificial intelligence (AI) models. The technological leap provides companies an opportunity to increasingly serve customers with AI agents, focusing human resources to train, oversee and intervene AI-driven chatbot conversations instead of performing them in person. Nevertheless, customers might still prefer to speak with a human instead of an AI agent. This study compares the effect of AI and human-AI hybrid chat conversations on customer satisfaction. An experiment concerning 208 chat conversations in an online store reveals that customers were as satisfied with the AI- and human-AI hybrid conversations, regardless of the disclaimer used. However, in AI-driven conversations, perceived humanness of the customer service system mediated the relationship between the disclaimer and customer satisfaction − when less was told about the underlying technological system, customers were more satisfied because the service was perceived as more human.