Organizational Factors Affecting Successful Implementation of Chatbots for Customer Service

The implementation of chatbots for customer service has primarily been studied as a technological installation with focus on the user and technical aspects of the implementation. Therefore, this research aims to fill in the gap in the existing literatures by addressing: 1) What motivate organizations to deploy chatbots for customer service, 2) How organizations define ‘successful implementation of chatbot’, and 3) Which and how organizational factors affect the implementation process. To meet the research objectives, an exploratory research design was chosen, where fourteen semi-structured interviews of chatbot-related resource persons in six Norway-based organizations were conducted. Interview data was analyzed using Template Analysis-approach of Thematic Analysis. The results show that most organizations were primarily motivated by the need to digitalize their businesses, the desire to improve their customer experience through better and faster services, as well as costs reduction. ‘Successful Implementation’ was often defined through a set of criteria such as percentage of successful issue resolution, customer satisfaction level, user rating and feedback, and reduction in customer service traffic. Five organizational factors affecting the successfulness of chatbot implementation were identified: 1) works and team organization, 2) change management, 3) competencies and competency acquisition, 4) organizational resources, and 5) performance measures. The findings of this research highlight the importance of non-technical aspects of chatbot implementation, in particular, the importance of organizational preparedness to support and ensure successful implementation of chatbot.