The psychology of Chatbots Vs Voice assistants

Is it better to direct your customers to call you or type a response?

While customers may have a preferred method of communicating with you, that should not be your only concern.

👉 It turns out that how they engage with you, via text or voice, may impact their satisfaction with your services.  

Matching method to product type

It’s rare these days to visit a website that doesn’t have a chatbot.

While most of these conversational agents are text-based, improvements in voice recognition technology and voice assistants (like Siri and Alexa) mean you now have a choice to make about which type of agent is best.

According to new research, just because they give the same answers doesn’t mean they’ll impact your customer the same way.

There are two dimensions to consider when making the decision.

1️⃣ First, you need to consider what type of product you sell.

Is yours a hedonic product, used for pleasure (e.g. holiday accommodation, chocolate cake, gaming console), or a utilitarian one where functionality is key (e.g. calculator, car tyres, accounting services, fruit)?

Some products could be either, depending on how you describe them. For example, you could describe an apartment’s view (hedonic benefit) or its proximity to public transport (utilitarian).

Product type matters because matching it to how your customers engage will give you better results. Feelings are best for hedonic products, and reasoning for utilitarian ones.

2️⃣ Which leads to your second consideration. How can you encourage them to focus on either feelings or reasoning?

That’s where communication mode comes in.

When people talk, they are more spontaneous and more subjective. It’s less formal, less filtered and more emotional.

When people write, they think about what they say. It’s a more cognitive and deliberative activity. They sweat the detail to increase the odds they’ll be understood.

That means for hedonic products, it’s better to have them talk with a voice assistant because it’s more feelings-based, but for utilitarian products, a text-based chatbot is a better match.

According to the researchers, matching the mode of communication to the product type increases the likelihood customers will choose the product and be satisfied with that choice.

That’s because it ‘feels right’.

For example, research participants were told to imagine booking a hotel for a trip to London using a fictitious travel site.

• They interacted with either a voice-based or text-based conversational agent to guide them through options before two hotels were finally presented.
• One hotel was described using hedonic attributes (e.g. beautiful view), and the other, utilitarian (e.g. close to subway).
• People who used the voice-based agent preferred the hedonic hotel, whereas those who used text, opted for the utilitarian one. 

In a follow-up study, participants were also more satisfied with their choice of student apartment when the mode of interaction matched the way the apartments were described.

• When apartments were described using hedonic attributes, those who used a voice-agent were more satisfied than those who had to type responses.
• The reverse was true when utilitarian attributes were used, where written responses enhanced choice satisfaction more than spoken ones. 

Implications for your business

Before defaulting to a text-based chatbot for your website, consider whether a voicebot is better.

• Particularly if you sell hedonic products, getting people to talk rather than type is best. That means including a phone number so they can call you as well as exploring the integration of a digital voice assistant to guide their inquiry.
• Likewise, when sending emails, letters or SMS to your customers, consider what your call-to-action path should be. In some cases, it might be better to encourage people to tell you what they want using voice services rather than taking them to a text-based response like typing or filling in a form.
• Brand equity matters. For example, people were more likely to choose an Acer tablet when speaking (using their feelings) rather than writing (using reason), but it didn’t matter which mode they used for a high-brand equity product like an Apple iPad. If your brand is not well known, matching the mode of communication to your product type might give you the edge over your competitors.

This article originally appeared in Smartcompany.

^{Ref: Schindler, D., Maiberger, T., Koschate-Fischer, N. et al. How speaking versus writing to conversational agents shapes consumers’ choice and choice satisfaction. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 52, 634–652 (2024).}