Concrete or abstract: How chatbot response styles influence customer satisfaction

•Chatbots lack empathic concern—the affective component of empathy—but own the cognitive component of empathy, or empathic accuracy.•When responding to service problems, concrete responses from chatbots (instead of abstract responses) can improve their empathic accuracy, thus increasing customer satisfaction.•Cuteness can alleviate the negative effect of abstract responses from chatbots on customer satisfaction. Lack of empathy is the key reason why chatbots cannot effectively handle service problems. Empathy consists of affective and cognitive components. Existing studies primarily emphasize empathic concern—the affective component of empathy—to improve the problem-solving performance of chatbots but neglect the cognitive component of empathy, or empathic accuracy. Focusing on empathy’s cognitive component, three experiments were conducted to explore how problem response styles of chatbots (concrete vs. abstract) influence customer satisfaction based on social response theory. When chatbots respond to service problems, their concrete responses can improve customer satisfaction than abstract responses. Empathic accuracy mediates the relationship between chatbot response styles and customer satisfaction. When responses are abstract, increasing chatbots’ cuteness can alleviate the negative effect of lack of empathic accuracy on customer satisfaction. These findings provide a deeper understanding of chatbots’ empathy and help enterprises improve the response performance of chatbots to deal with service problems.