Summary of How Emoticon Affects Chatbot Users and Tip for making better Chatbot

1. How Emoticon Affects
Chatbot Users? 😀😄😆
Paper Review: Service with Emoticons: How Customers Interpret
Employee Use of Emoticons in Online Service Encounters
Kobkrit Viriyayudhakorn, Ph.D.
iApp Technology Limited

2. Emoticon
• 😀😄😆 Founded in Chat, E-mail, Digital Communication Platform
• Use emoticon in chat with friends and family much more often than with
other individuals
• Add agreeableness, sociability; but show the lack of self-reliance
• Some guidelines suggest a limited use of emoticons in the workplace
(Perceived as informal and unprofessional)

3. Warm vs Competence
• Warm - Friendliness, helpfulness, and sociability
• Competence - Capability, skillfulness, and efficacy.

4. Communal vs Exchange relationship styles
Communal Relationship: A service employee to play the role of a friend
and/or family member and display behaviors such as showing genuine care
toward customer
Exchange Relationship: individuals are more likely to be calculative,
expecting to receive benefits comparable to what they have provided and
thus caring more about each other’s capabilities and professionalism

5. 4 Studies
Study 1 Does emoticons perceive the service employee as warmer but less
competent?
Study 2 examines an individual factor
- Customer with communal-oriented (love warmth) are more likely to satisfied with
emoticon
- Customer with exchange-oriented (love competence) are more likely to unsatisfied
with emoticon.
Studies 3 examine on individual factors (like in Study 2) but focused on
Unsatisfactory services only
Studies 4 examine on individual factors (like in Study 2) but focused on Employees’
extrarole services

6. Study 1
• Does emoticon give warmer felling but lesser competence?
Tested with one hundred eighteen participants (59% female, 62.71% under the age of 26) from a large university in Hong Kong.
Sig tested by one-way ANOVA: (F(2, 115) = 3.03, p = .052, variance = 0.05)
<
Sig*
>
Sig*

7. Study 2
• Studies with 300 student (73% female, Age Mean = 19.98) from a large university in Hong Kong,.
• Classify users into two categories by interview
• Customer with the communal-oriented (Prefer Warmth)
• Customer with the exchange-oriented (Prefer Competence)
• Check with following scenarios
• Positive Emoticon 😄😍
• Negative Emoticon 😣😫
• No Emoticon

8. Study 2
<
Sig*
>
Marginal Sig*
Tested with 3x2 ANOVA: (M = 5.17, SD = 1.08; t(294) = 2.09, p =.037, d = .38)

9. Study 3
• Study on the unsatisfactory services only.
• People will care about the competence more than the warmth. (Exchange Relationship become
dominant)
• Studies with 509 participant (51% female, Age Mean = 35.18) from Amazon Mechanical Turk.
• Mobile Telecom Company situtions
• Emoticon Restriction: Only Yes 😄 , No 😣emoticon used in the message.
• 2 Groups of Users: Communal-orient vs Exchange-orient (Classify by Questionnaire)
• 3 Situations: No unsatisfactory service (Query information) vs. Competence-related service
failure (Charging the high bill wrong) vs. Warmth-related service failure (Bad employee complaint)

10. Study 3
< No Emoticon
< Emoticon
< Emoticon
< No Emoticon

11. Study 4
• Study on the Employees’ extrarole services only. (Discretionary behaviors that extend beyond formal job
requirements to proactively address customers’ needs)
• People will care about the warmth more than the competency. (Communal Relationship become dominant)
• Studies with 909 real online shoppers (77% female, mean age = 27.58). a Chinese e-commerce firm (Taobao)
that sells clothes drying racks online.
• Emoticon Restriction: Only Yes 😄 , No 😣 emoticon used in the message.
• 2 Groups of Users: Communal-orient vs Exchange-orient (Classify by Questionnaire)
• 3 Situations: Absence of extra-role services vs. Competence-related extra-role services (Voluntarily sharing
extra technical details about a product) vs. Warmth-related extra-role services (Kind reminder regarding product
safety)
• Satisfaction measurement: by recommending an other shop at the end of conversation. Check if how much
money they will spend on that shop.

12. Study 4
< No Emoticon
< Emoticon
< Emoticon
< No Emoticon

13. Conclusion 1
• If you don’t know our customer orient yet
• Business cared with professionalism (Bank, Legal, Medical,
Government): ❌ Emoticon
• Business cared with communities (Association, Club, Entertainment):
✅ Emoticon 😄😍

14. Conclusion 2
• If we know our customer orient (If we have data):
• Customer who has high professionalism features (Have job in
professional realm, High Income, Super busy): ❌ Emoticon
• Customer who love community (Have a lot free time, Take care family,
Slow-life): ✅ Emoticon 😄😍

15. Conclusion 3
• If the chat is in the unsatisfactory situation: ❌ Emoticon
• If the chat is in the extra-role service (extra helpful more than customer’s
expectation): ✅ Emoticon 😄😍

16. Q/A 😄😍
Paper URL: https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article-abstract/45/5/973/4924869
http://ai.iapp.co.th