Bots with Feelings: Should AI Agents Express Positive Emotion in Customer Service?

Abstract

Customer service employees are generally advised to express positive emotion in their interactions with customers. The rise and maturity of artificial intelligence (AI) powered conversational agents, also known as chatbots, beg the question: should AI agents be equipped with the ability to express positive emotion in customer service? This research explores how, when, and why an AI agent’s expression of positive emotion affects customers’ service evaluations. We argue that AI-expressed positive emotion can influence customers via dual pathways: an affective pathway of emotional contagion and a cognitive pathway of expectation-disconfirmation. We propose that positive emotion expressed by an AI agent (vs. a human employee) is less effective in facilitating service evaluations because of a heightened level of expectation-disconfirmation. We further introduce customers’ relationship norm orientation as a novel individual difference variable that affects their expectations toward the AI agent and moderates the cognitive pathway of expectation-disconfirmation. Results from three laboratory experiments substantiate our claims. By revealing a distinctive impact of positive emotion expressed by an AI agent compared with a human employee, these findings deepen our understanding of customers’ reactions to emotional AIs and offer valuable insights for the deployment of AIs in customer service.

Keywords: emotional artificial intelligence, conversation agent, chatbot , customer service, emotional contagion, expectation-disconfirmation, relationship norm orientation