Voice-based interfaces provide new opportunities for firms to interact with consumers along the customer journey. The current work demonstrates across four studies that voice-based (as opposed to text-based) interfaces promote more flow-like user experiences, resulting in more positively-valenced service experiences, and ultimately more favorable behavioral firm outcomes (i.e., contract renewal, conversion rates, and consumer sentiment). Moreover, we also provide evidence for two important boundary conditions that reduce such flow-like user experiences in voice-based interfaces (i.e., semantic disfluency and the amount of conversational turns). The findings of this research highlight how fundamental theories of human communication can be harnessed to create more experiential service experiences with positive downstream consequences for consumers and firms. These findings have important practical implications for firms that aim at leveraging the potential of voice-based interfaces to improve consumers’ service experiences and the theory-driven “conversational design” of voice-based interfaces.

基于语音的界面为公司在客户旅程中与消费者互动提供了新的机会。目前的工作通过四项研究表明，基于语音（而不是基于文本）的界面可以促进更多类似流程的用户体验，从而带来更积极的服务体验，并最终带来更有利的行为公司结果（即合同续签、转化率和消费者情绪）。此外，我们还提供了两个重要的边界条件的证据，这些边界条件减少了基于语音的界面中的流式用户体验（即语义不流畅和会话轮次的数量）。这项研究的结果强调了如何利用人类沟通的基本理论来创造更多的体验式服务体验，并对消费者和公司产生积极的下游影响。这些发现对于旨在利用基于语音的界面的潜力来改善消费者的服务体验和基于语音的界面的理论驱动的“对话设计”的公司具有重要的实际意义。