A study on firms’ communication based on artificial intelligence and its influence on customers’ complaint behavior in Social media environment

Abstract

Abstract The purpose of the study is to understand actual behavior of customers and firms by analyzing the real time interaction between firm and customers on social media platform. The study also pursues to assess the way firms respond to the customer’s complaint on different social media platforms through autobots based on artificial intelligence. The study identifies official Facebook and Twitter pages of top online shopping portals. The number of complaints and responses posted on these pages are documented and analyzed. Netnography method is used for data collection. Connotation key words are used for selection of comments and tweets. The study concludes that organizations respond to the most of the complaints publically but they further ask for the personal interaction with the complainer to resolve the complaint through pre-defined statements. The study has also revealed that pre-defined statements stated by autobots based on artificial intelligence seem insufficient to resolve customer complaints. The limitation of the study is associated with the netnography technique, which has restricted the exploration to only those consumers who have posted comments on Twitter or Facebook. Hence, other physical factors i.e. customer responses through numerous offline modes were absconded. The study is limited to Facebook and Twitter only. This study is limited to four major online shopping portals; it leaves a lot of scope to analyze other industries such as banking and insurance, hospitality, aviation etc. The output of the study suggests that the firms need to be conscious enough to provide customized and adaptive solutions to the customers’ complaints instead of pre-defined responses through artificial intelligence as it lacks emotions to empathize with customers’ issues. As per the literature of review, methods chosen in previous researches by researchers were having a methodological gap, as netnography in social media environment remained unused earlier, which has reinforced to analyze original behavior of customers and responsiveness of organization.