“Hey Genie, You Got Me Thinking About My Menu Choices!”

Abstract

Conversational agents (CAs) that deliver proactive interventions can benefit users by reducing their cognitive workload and improving performance. However, little is known regarding how such interventions would impact users’ reflection on choices in voice-only decision-making tasks. We conducted a within-subjects experiment to evaluate the effect of CA’s feedback delivery strategy at three levels (no feedback, unsolicited, and solicited feedback) and the impact on users’ likelihood of changing their choices in an interactive food ordering scenario. We discovered that in both feedback conditions the CA was perceived to be significantly more persuasive than in the baseline condition, while being perceived as significantly less confident. Interestingly, while unsolicited feedback was perceived as less appropriate than the baseline, both types of proactive feedback led participants to relisten and reconsider menu options significantly more often. Our results provide insights regarding the impact of proactive feedback on CA perception and user’s reflection in decision-making tasks, thereby paving a new way for designing proactive CAs.