How Interaction Mechanism and Error Responses Influence Users’ Responses to Customer Service Chatbots

As more and more people regularly interact with chatbots in their everyday lives, it is crucial to understand how users perceive and evaluate them. This study examined whether free text (vs. button) interaction with and social (vs. neutral) error responses of chatbots effectively improve user responses. Using an online experiment (N = 416) in which participants interacted with a customer service chatbot, we investigated how interaction mechanism and error response influence perceived warmth and competence, satisfaction, usage intention, and emotional connection with the company. Contrary to our hypotheses, we found no evidence that free text interaction increases acceptance. Interacting via buttons was preferred, potentially because participants perceived the free text chatbot as less warm and competent. Interestingly, social error responses only increased satisfaction. We discuss the results considering recent advances in Large Language Models and highlight how the findings can guide further research and help practitioners develop efficient, user-friendly chatbots.