This podcast combines the theory and practice of chatbots in customer relationships. Anna Rozumowski and Rolf Rellstab both work at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW ), where they are involved in chatbot projects. While Anna has a lot to say about the theory, Rolf shows us how the ZHAW uses chatbots.

About Anna Rozumowski

Anna Rozumowski is a research assistant at the ZHAW Institute of Marketing and Management, which is part of the Digital Marketing department. Her research area focuses primarily on trust research in customer relationships and the technological requirements of chatbots in customer dialog.

About Rolf Rellstab

Rolf Rellstab has a degree in business education and is responsible for further training at his institute. His research focuses primarily on innovation in customer dialog, specifically how interaction skills and communication style affect customer satisfaction.

Research projects in the chatbot area

What is being researched?

At the ZHAW, Anna is researching questions about trust in customer relationships. The theoretical model behind this is based on the fact that we first assess people’s likeability and warmth and then their competence axis. If both factors are high, this is more likely to lead to trust.

Anna tries to transfer this model to a digital relationship, i.e. what this model looks like in a dialog or in an encounter with a chatbot.

This includes extensive literature research for the theoretical basis, followed by an experiment with students. The students, in this case the test subjects, spoke once with an employee and once with a chatbot. Both (chatbot and employee) were supposed to sell the students a camera. The experiment examined how the dialog affects the warmth, competence and trust in the consultant.

What are the results?

The results showed that the chatbot was perceived as minimally more likeable and competent, while the employee was rated as minimally more trustworthy. However, none of these results showed a significant difference between employees or the chatbot.

However, there are still many unanswered questions. Firstly, these were young test subjects who may be more open to digital assistants than another generation or less prejudiced. Secondly, the trust axis with chatbots is not a given and a bad experience with a bot leads many to conclude that the technology is not yet mature. The technology is mature, but first and foremost it needs to be used correctly. Therefore, for Anna’s experiment to be meaningful, a different scenario would have to be tested with a different use case.

Chatbot project for continuing education at the ZHAW

To the chatbot of the ZHAW

A chatbot project is currently being implemented at the ZHAW in the area of continuing education. People who are interested in continuing their education at the ZHAW must reckon with higher costs. This is why people interested in further education give a lot of thought to the evolution of a degree course. Consequently, numerous questions arrive at the ZHAW secretariat.

Accordingly, there is great potential on the training sub-side to use chatbots as a valuable additional communication channel that is unbeatable, especially in terms of accessibility and speed of response. This is particularly suitable as a first point of contact for those who are interested in further training and want to find out more on the website.

Procedure for implementation

First, two use cases were defined for the chatbot.

• The chatbot as an answer provider to many different questions that have arisen over the years and have been divided into Q&A categories.
• The chatbot as an advisory assistant. To do this, the chatbot asks various questions relating to the further training path in order to ultimately be able to suggest suitable further training to the interested party.

The first phase of this project involves rule-based bots. There are plans to develop these into smart bots (AI bots) in the future. The chatbot is currently being tested with internal staff, but more recently also with users, in particular to assess the communication style. Short, yet warm and friendly dialogs are preferred, which always give the user positive confirmation in the dialog.

How are Anna and Rolf learning about chatbots?

Anna and Rolf are both continuing their education with their research and numerous publications, some of which are not from a scientific environment but shed light on specific use cases. This includes constant information and observation: what has already been examined and what has not? What are the exciting issues in this area? This enables them to constantly expand their knowledge in order to set up new exciting research projects or chatbot use cases.

It’s best to listen to the podcast episode with Sophie Hundertmark, Anna Rozumowski and Rolf Rellstab for yourself. Have fun!

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