Tell Me More: Transparency and Time-Fillers to Optimize Chatbots’ Waiting Time Experience

In customer-chatbot conversations, the agents regularly come to their limit, which requires to hand over the request to a human service representative. In the case of unmanaged handovers, customers encounter huge uncertainty while waiting and are often left alone with unsatisfied service inquiries. The waiting time (and service experience) might result in frustration and potential loss of the customer. In this paper, we discuss results from a study aimed at turning chatbot handover routines into positive experiences. In a lab study with (n=28) participants, we compared two handover types that utilized the concepts of time fillers and time and queue information with a baseline handover without such countermeasures. Our results, based on subjective waiting experience, service quality, as well as user experience and affect confirm that digital enterprises have to provide maximum transparency to customers, e.g., details about waiting time and queue status. In addition, they might use “time-fillers’’ in waiting situations to further improve customer satisfaction.