Is Making Mistakes Human? On the Perception of Typing Errors in Chatbot Communication

The increasing application of Conversational Agents (CAs) changes the way customers and businesses interact during a service encounter. Research has shown that CA equipped with social cues (e.g., having a name, greeting users) stimulates the user to perceive the interaction as human-like, which can positively influence the overall experience. Specifically, social cues have shown to lead to increased customer satisfaction, perceived service quality, and trustworthiness in service encounters. However, many CAs are discontinued because of their limited conversational ability, which can lead to customer dissatisfaction. Nevertheless, making errors and mistakes can also be seen as a human characteristic (e.g., typing errors). Existing research on human-computer interfaces lacks in the area of CAs producing human-like errors and their perception in a service encounter situation. Therefore, we conducted a 2x2 online experiment with 228 participants on how CAs typing errors and CAs human-like behavior treatments influence user's perception, including perceived service quality.