An Analysis of Chatbot and Virtual Assistant Usage on Generation Z Customer Satisfaction in E-Commerce: A Case Study of Shopee Indonesia

The rapid growth of e-commerce in Indonesia has encouraged Shopee to rely on artificial intelligence (AI)-based chatbots and virtual assistants as part of its customer service infrastructure. Nevertheless, a gap remains between Generation Z users’ expectations for fast and personalised service and the service they actually experience, particularly when dealing with complex complaints such as product returns. This study examines the effects of chatbots and virtual assistants on the customer satisfaction of Generation Z Shopee users, both individually and jointly. A causal explanatory quantitative approach was employed by distributing a five-point Likert-scale questionnaire to 141 active Generation Z Shopee users selected through purposive sampling. The data were analysed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The results show that both chatbots and virtual assistants have positive and significant effects on customer satisfaction, with the virtual assistant demonstrating a slightly stronger effect. Together, the two variables explain 57.4% of the variance in Generation Z customer satisfaction. These findings support the relevance of the SERVQUAL framework in the context of AI-based services and offer practical implications for Shopee management and other e-commerce providers, particularly the need to strengthen virtual-assistant personalisation without overlooking chatbot responsiveness as users’ first point of contact.