TY - GEN

T1 - More than FAQ! Chatbot Taxonomy for Business-to-Business Customer Services.

AU - Janssen, Antje Henriette Annette

AU - Cardona, Davinia Rodríguez

AU - Breitner, Michael H.

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

PY - 2021/2/3

Y1 - 2021/2/3

N2 - Chatbots are becoming increasingly important in the customer service sector due to their service automation, cost saving opportunities and broad customer satisfaction. Similarly, in the business-to-business (B2B) sector, more and more companies use chatbots on their websites and social media channels, to establish sales team contact, to provide information about their products and services or to help customers with their requests and claims. Customer relations in the B2B environment are especially characterized by a high level of personal contact service and support through expert explanations due to the complexity of the products and service offerings. In order to support these efforts, chatbots can be used to assist buying centers along the purchase decision process. However, B2B chatbots have so far only been marginally addressed in the scientific human-computer interaction and information systems literature. To provide both researchers and practitioners with knowledge about the characteristics and archetypal patterns of chatbots currently existing in B2B customer services, we develop and discuss a 17-dimensional chatbot taxonomy for B2B customer services based on Nickerson et al. [1]. By classifying 40 chatbots in a cluster analysis, this study has identified three archetypal structures prevailing in B2B customer service chatbot usage.

AB - Chatbots are becoming increasingly important in the customer service sector due to their service automation, cost saving opportunities and broad customer satisfaction. Similarly, in the business-to-business (B2B) sector, more and more companies use chatbots on their websites and social media channels, to establish sales team contact, to provide information about their products and services or to help customers with their requests and claims. Customer relations in the B2B environment are especially characterized by a high level of personal contact service and support through expert explanations due to the complexity of the products and service offerings. In order to support these efforts, chatbots can be used to assist buying centers along the purchase decision process. However, B2B chatbots have so far only been marginally addressed in the scientific human-computer interaction and information systems literature. To provide both researchers and practitioners with knowledge about the characteristics and archetypal patterns of chatbots currently existing in B2B customer services, we develop and discuss a 17-dimensional chatbot taxonomy for B2B customer services based on Nickerson et al. [1]. By classifying 40 chatbots in a cluster analysis, this study has identified three archetypal structures prevailing in B2B customer service chatbot usage.

KW - Business-to-Business

KW - Chatbot taxonomy

KW - Customer services

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85101513214&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/978-3-030-68288-0_12

DO - 10.1007/978-3-030-68288-0_12

M3 - Conference contribution

SN - 978-3-030-68287-3

T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)

SP - 175

EP - 189

BT - Chatbot Research and Design

A2 - Følstad, Asbjørn

A2 - Araujo, Theo

A2 - Papadopoulos, Symeon

A2 - Law, Effie L.-C.

A2 - Luger, Ewa

A2 - Goodwin, Morten

A2 - Brandtzaeg, Petter Bae

CY - Cham

ER -