Effects of Online Customer Service Types and Customer Anger on Negative Word-of-Mouth : The Moderating Role of Service Failure Controllability

The application of chatbots on e-commerce platforms is becoming increasingly widespread. With the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, previous research has predominantly focused on service failures occurring with the chatbots themselves. There is limited research on scenarios where chatbots handle service failures that are controllable by the sellers. This paper conducted online surveys through two experiments involving a total of 546 participants. The results indicate that, in the event of a service failure, customers are more likely to spread negative word-of-mouth about the store and have lower repurchase intentions when served by chatbots compared to human customer service representatives. This is because customers experience higher levels of anger with the chatbots. However, when customers perceive the service failure as uncontrollable by the seller, the impact of the type of customer service provider on negative word-of-mouth via customer anger is weakened while when customers perceive it as controllable the impact is strengthened. This study provides theoretical contributions for online retail enterprises to apply intelligent customer service while preventing further deterioration of service failures.