Integrating a chatbot into a B2C e-commerce company to support customer care agents

Sammanfattning

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how companies can implement chatbots in customer care departments in the context of B2B e-commerce. With rising customer expectations for fast and efficient services, chatbots are increasingly being implemented in customer care departments as a first point of contact to support customer service operations. However, many fail to deliver expected results due to ineffective implementation and their value contribution remains unclear. Through semi-structured interviews with industry professionals, qualitative data were collected in the scope of this thesis. In addition, a survey gathered quantitative data from users with different levels of chatbot experience. The data set was analyzed using thematic analysis and descriptive statistics and later discussed with regard to key patterns and findings in the given data set. The findings show that given the current technology of chatbots, they should primarily act as supporting tools to complement a human agent in the customer care department to handle simple and repetitive inquiries. The findings also indicated that users’ trust and acceptance remain limited. Furthermore, a successful chatbot implementation depends on the readiness of the organization, clear strategic objectives and proper integration into existing customer service processes as well as appropriate backend systems.