Hybrid Service Recovery: Design for Seamless Inquiry Handovers between Conversational Agents and Human Service Agents

Abstract

The effort of companies to deploy conversational agents (CAs) for customer self-service has been renewed due to their recent technological improvements. Despite their efficiency in processing recurring simple customer inquiries, limited capabilities of CAs to handle complex inquiries still lead to service failure and unsatisfied customers. Therefore, we propose a hybrid service recovery strategy with real-time handovers of inquiries from CAs to human service agents (HSAs), if CAs’ capabilities are exceeded. Following a Design Science Research (DSR) approach, we present design principles (DPs) for the inquiry handover scenario, based on meta-requirements (MRs) derived from literature and expert interviews. By evaluating the DPs via prototype instantiation and process modulation, the suitability and interdependence of CAs’ information collection activities and information presentation for handover could be verified.