The voice in the machine: designing embodied conversational agents for rapport in complex online service delivery

What is it about?

People are increasingly getting help from digital “humans” that talk. These are known as Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs). We studied how two design choices shape how customers react to these agents: the agent’s tone of voice (enthusiastic vs. calm) and how it interacts (socio-emotional vs. task-focused). Across three studies where people chatted with an agent, we found that mixing these cues works best. An enthusiastic voice paired with a task-focused style, or a calm voice paired with a socio-emotional style, makes agents feel more believable and helps customers feel at ease with them. When that happens, people say they are more likely to use the service, follow the agent’s advice, and even accept higher price points. Why this matters: many chatbots and digital agents focus on just sounding friendly or just being efficient. Our results show that it is the right combination that counts. Service providers can boost customers' willingness to use digital agents and improve the outcomes from customers using those services. They can do this by making sure that voice tone and interaction style are used together, rather than focusing on the design of one or the other.

Featured Image

Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash

Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Using chatbots is not just about getting things done but getting them done in a way that feels good to us. We look at how you can build a comfortable ‘relationship’ when a chatbot is helping you with important tasks.