Conversational Agents - Exploring Generative Mechanisms and Second-hand Effects of Actualized Technology Affordances

Abstract

Many organisations jumped on the bandwagon and implemented conversational agents (CAs) as a new communication channel. Customers benefit from shorter resolution times, ubiquitous availability, and consistent and compliant responses. However, despite the hype around CAs and the various benefits for customers, we know little about the effects of external facing CAs on the human workforce. This is crucial to better manage the possible changes in the work organisation. Adopting a critical realist stance and using the lens of technology affordances we explore a) why users increasingly actualize CA affordances and b) the first and second-hand effects of affordance actualisation on customers and human employees. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 experts in the field and introduce the term affordance effects pairs describing the relationships between the first and second-hand effects. We further explain which generative mechanisms lead to an increasing actualization of affordances and the associated effects.

Understanding Collaboration with Virtual Assistants – The Role of Social Identity and the Extended Self

“…We used the social cues that are effective according to current knowledge (Feine et al 2019) and tried to keep the interference factors, such as the influence of a time limit on team performance (Massey et al 2003), as low as possible. Our insight into the relationship between social identity theory and the extended self in the context of virtual collaboration with VAs leads to an advanced understanding of machines as teammates and can be explained by the existing IS literature (Schwabe 2003;Waizenegger et al 2020;Seeber et al 2020a, b).…”

“…Current research demonstrates that VAs can improve virtual collaboration (Waizenegger et al 2020;Seeber et al 2020a). Organizational human teams frequently fall short of their possibilities (Kozlowski and Ilgen 2007), thus the use of a VA as a legitimate virtual team member and sociotechnical ensemble (Seeber et al 2018) might foster decision making and improve team collaboration (Waizenegger et al 2020;Seeber et al 2020b). The integration of VAs as virtual colleagues is valuable to increase the effectiveness of virtual collaboration in teams (Goodbody 2005).…”

Collaborating with technology-based autonomous agents

“…The agents allow people to focus on a wider range of tasks by reducing work load. For example, while chatbots help customers to solve routine problems, customer service employees spend more time helping customers to solve more complex problems that require human characteristics such as empathy and expertise (Waizenegger et al , 2020). At the same time, when certain tasks are taken over or complemented by such agents, teams become dependent on the tools' successful performance.…”

Hybrid Service Recovery: Design for Seamless Inquiry Handovers between Conversational Agents and Human Service Agents

“…complaint management) and information (e.g. for products) 24/7 to customers in different contexts [10,31]. As such, chatbots are increasingly used as a text-based customer-facing channel for service delivery [32,33].…”

“…FAQs) and processing recurring data-intensive requests (e.g. change pickup location for package) [10][11][12]. Requests that are more complex (e.g.…”