Chatbot with Resilience: The Impact of Repair Strategies on Customer Satisfaction in Conversational Breakdowns

When chatbot is used in customer service, conversational breakdowns are common. Repairing from conversational breakdowns is a key step in service recovery. Drawing upon grounding in communication theory, this paper explores the impact of three repair strategies (i.e., keyword confirmation explanation, confirmation, and top response) on customer satisfaction. We formulate a research model to compare how repair strategies impact customer satisfaction through two pathways: perceived intelligence and customer participation. We further introduce AI attitude as an individual difference variable, which moderates the pathway. Through the online between-subjects laboratory experiments, we gathered data from 244 participants. Our findings indicate that the keyword confirmation repair strategy can influence customer satisfaction through perceived intelligence and customer participation. The paper discusses both theoretical and practical implications.