This study examines the comparative effectiveness of AI chatbots and human support systems in the e-commerce sector. With the rapid digitalization of retail and growing customer expectations for instant service, organizations increasingly rely on artificial intelligence (AI) driven chatbots to handle customer interactions. At the same time, human support representatives continue to play a vital role in managing complex, emotional, and high-value customer issues. The research adopts a conceptual and analytical approach by reviewing existing scholarly literature and industry findings to evaluate efficiency, cost implications, customer satisfaction, personalization, scalability, and trust factors associated with both support systems. The study identifies that AI chatbots provide 24/7 availability, quick response time, operational cost reduction, and scalability advantages. However, human support demonstrates superior performance in empathy, emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, and handling complex queries. Findings suggest that while AI chatbots significantly improve operational efficiency and first-level query resolution, human agents remain essential for customer retention and relationship building. The study concludes that a hybrid support model integrating AI automation with human intervention delivers the most effective results in enhancing customer experience and organizational performance in e-commerce.
Gupta et al. (Thu,) studied this question.