Retailers are increasingly using conversational AI (chatbots) for customer service due to the perceived benefits and reduced operational costs of this emerging technology. Yet our understanding of how consumers perceive interactions with chatbots, and how these interactions may influence other consumer service programs, remains limited. This paper investigates the differences in consumers' sentiments towards chatbots across retail sectors, and the influence chatbots have on consumers’ sentiments and expectations towards other service interactions with online human agents. Using a hybrid automated sentiment analysis approach, we identify that (1) overall sentiment towards bots are less negative than sentiment towards online human agents; (2) these sentiments differ across fashion and telecommunications sectors, and finally (3) sentiments towards online human agents in both sectors become more negative after a retailer implements a chatbot.

由于这种新兴技术的明显好处和降低的运营成本，零售商越来越多地使用对话式人工智能（聊天机器人）进行客户服务。然而，我们对消费者如何看待与聊天机器人的互动以及这些互动如何影响其他消费者服务项目的理解仍然有限。本文调查了不同零售行业消费者对聊天机器人的情绪差异，以及聊天机器人对消费者的情绪和对与在线人工代理的其他服务交互的期望的影响。使用混合自动情绪分析方法，我们发现 (1) 对机器人的整体情绪不如对在线人工代理的情绪那么消极；(2) 这些情绪因时尚和电信行业而异，