Service Agents or E-robots?——A Study on the Online Customer Service Strategy Selection for the E-retailer in the AI Era

Abstract

Abstract: Artificial intelligence has been applied to online customer service systems by e-retailers and is receiving increasing attention. This paper studies the strategic choice of online customer service mode for the e-retailer by exploring whether the introduction of intelligent technology in online customer service system brings more benefits to the e-retailer regarding consumers' heterogeneous shopping intention. Four different decision-making scenarios are discussed:no online customer service, with online service agent, with artificial intelligent online customer service, and with hybrid online customer service; decision models are constructed for each scenario, and the optimal product price, optimal product demand, and optimal product profit are obtained for each scenario; then the conditions for introducing intelligent technology in online customer service are analyzed. Some interesting results are obtained. (1) The improvement of online customer service quality does not affect product pricing, but can increase product demand and contribute to the profit growth of the e-retailer. (2) The higher learning capacity of e-robots contributes to the profit increase under AI online customer service. However, under the hybrid online customer service mode, whether profit growth can be achieved by improving the learning ability of e-robots depends not only on the e-robots' learning capacity but also on the service quality of customer service agents. (3) When the wage contribution rate of customer service agents is low, or when both the current wage rate of service agents and the learning capacity of e-robots are high, the e-retailer should switch from online service agent to artificial intelligent online customer service. (4) The e-retailer should switch from online service agent to hybrid online customer service when both the service quality of customer service agents and the learning capacity of e-robots are high.

Key words: online retail, online customer service, artificial intelligent customer service, human resource cost, hassle cost

Zhang Peng, Ma Jun, Dong Shaozeng, Sun Kai. Service Agents or E-robots?——A Study on the Online Customer Service Strategy Selection for the E-retailer in the AI Era[J]. Management Review, 2023, 35(11): 166-178.

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