Why trust?

Trust is an important aspect of any interaction, in this article, we will present the core factors that might impact the trust your users have towards your chatbot and come with tips on how to design chatbots your customers trust, and love to use. 

There are many factors that impact the trust we have in the systems we are interacting with. In robotics, we often look towards the Hancock et al. [2011] classification. This presents three impact categories: the robot(or system), the people, and the environment. Out of these, the robot's performance has shown to be the most important aspect to consider when optimizing for trust. It is also the one thing easily within our control! 

Another study focused specifically on chatbots, found that the overall factors that impact trust are either those concerning the chatbot or the factors concerning service context and environment surrounding the chatbot [Følstad et al, 2018].

So, what does this mean? Well, research shows that the performance of our chatbots will have the greatest impact on users’ trust. Now how do we optimise this? 

‍How we approach this in Kindly? 

In Kindly, many of our chatbots have already advanced far in the help they give users. 

1. We have always strived to manage and exceed users' expectations. One way to manage expectations is by giving them a heads-up before they start chatting away and by keeping system transparency in mind. 

2. Kindly GPT help people constantly, both customers and employees. With more advanced solutions rolling out, some of our chatbots now answer questions about specific products through smart webhooks, all while keeping the fallback rate low! You can read more about Kindly GPT here: https://www.kindly.ai/product-page/kindly-gpt.

3. Many of our chatbots are smart enough to help actively solve peoples' problems. Our chatbots are already helping with tasks such as tracking packages for customers of Kicks, and ending rides with Voi. This last feature stepped in to assist Voi when they experienced a sudden outage, when the bot still allowed users to end their rides through the chatbot. This allowed their support team to continue their day, stress free.

We have in this article given you a short insight into three key aspects to consider when designing trustworthy chatbots: Expectation management, answer optimisation and implemented functionality. 

We strive to make our chatbots better every single day. 

This more than anything underlines the core mission of Kindly: 

Creating the world’s most loved AI chatbot

References

Følstad, A., Nordheim, C. B., & Bjørkli, C. A. (2018). What makes users trust a chatbot for customer service? An exploratory interview study. In Internet Science: 5th International Conference, INSCI 2018, St. Petersburg, Russia, October 24–26, 2018, Proceedings 5 (pp. 194-208). Springer International Publishing.

Hancock, P. A., Billings, D. R., Schaefer, K. E., Chen, J. Y., De Visser, E. J., & Parasuraman, R. (2011). A meta-analysis of factors affecting trust in human-robot interaction. Human factors, 53(5), 517-527.