AI Empathy in Customer Service
When things go wrong, can a machine's empathy make them right?
We investigate whether empathic AI voice assistants can repair customer interactions when technology or service fails. Our research examines how the timing and form of AI empathy influence frustration, aggression, trust, satisfaction, and service recovery.
AI voice assistants now handle customer service in high-stakes contexts like banking, yet interaction failures remain common, frustrating users and eroding trust.
We study empathy as an emotional buffer: how an empathic response at the moment of failure regulates customer emotions, protects satisfaction, and defuses aggression. The insight we pursue is precise timing: understanding when empathy repairs a broken interaction, and when it merely decorates one.