Exploratory and Empirical Investigation of AI in Social Media Customer Care

This thesis analyses the impact of AI on social media customer care from the perspective of consumers. The reason is twofold. First, a comprehensive literature review on the topic showed that current published articles focus on technical characteristics of the technology. Second, business can derive added value from understanding the interaction and relationship their customers establish at every contact point, including aid requests on network platforms. The thesis conducts a thematic analysis via interviews to explore which variables affect customer perceptions of AI. Findings suggest that the most relevant themes for consumers are agent disclosure, query complexity, communication channel and brand image. Two of these themes, i.e. agent disclosure (AI vs human agent) and brand image (innovative vs sophisticated), are tested. The study finds that communications from artificial intelligence in social media negatively impacts customer satisfaction as well as service quality. In addition, the interaction between agent type and brand image also affects service quality. Finally, this thesis concludes by suggesting further research questions, including the test of message complexity and the manipulation of publicly offered recovery solutions.