Moments of Truth with Conversational Agents

Description

Moments of Truth are viewed in Marketing as the decisive moments during the customer journey that eventually shape future purchase decisions, brand loyalty and recommendations. Recently the concept has found recognition with large tech corporations that seek to influence customer experience at the earliest possible stages of system usage. Despite their importance, moments of truth have hardly been defined or conceptualized. More importantly few technology studies have actually applied it. Extending and deepening the understanding of Moments of Truth, we investigate how a customer’s truth really forms when engaging with a new technology and what we can learn from philosophy and sociology about the phenomenon.
In a qualitative study with 30 Amazon Alexa users, we investigated memorable moments between users and their conversational agents. We explore the multifaceted landscape of interactions shaping a customer’s truth - interactions which play out positively or negatively because they tie specific value qualities to the agent. We also address ruptures in the customer journey – deeply unsettling Moments of Truth that can abruptly destroy a previously good relationship. We argue that gradual and incidental truth formation can deliver valuable insights for system developers and provide a new perspective for the analysis of customer journeys.

Period	15 Jun 2020 → 17 Jun 2020
Event title	European Conference on Information Systems
Event type	Unknown
Degree of Recognition	International