The dark side of AI-powered service interactions: exploring the process of co-destruction from the customer perspective

Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbots are changing the nature of service interfaces from being human-driven to technology-dominant. As a result, customers are expected to resolve issues themselves before reaching out to customer service representatives, ultimately becoming a central element of service production as co-creators of value. However, AI-powered interactions can also fail, potentially leading to anger, confusion, and customer dissatisfaction. We draw on the value co-creation literature to investigate the process of co-destruction in AI-powered service interactions. We adopt an exploratory approach based on in-depth interviews with 27 customers who have interacted with AI-powered chatbots in customer service settings. We find five antecedents of failed interactions between customers and chatbots: authenticity issues, cognition challenges, affective issues, functionality issues, and integration conflicts. We observe that although customers do accept part of the responsibility for co-destruction, they largely attribute the problems they experience to resource misintegration by service providers. Our findings contribute a better understanding of value co-destruction in AI-powered service settings and provide a richer conceptualization of the link between customer resource loss, attributions of resource loss, and subsequent customer coping strategies. Our findings also offer service managers insights into how to avoid and mitigate value co-destruction in AI service settings.

Automated summary

AI-powered chatbots are reshaping service interactions, with customers playing a central role in value co-creation. Antecedents of failed interactions between customers and chatbots are identified, with customers attributing issues mainly to resource misintegration by service providers. This research offers insights for service managers on avoiding and mitigating value co-destruction in AI service settings.