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Today's digital progress highlights disruptive digital technology as a numerous impact on marketing and societies. Artificial intelligence in conjunction with chatbots creates a seamless and powerful tool for customer service. Companies are estimated to save 30% in customer service related costs while chatbots can assist with up to 80% of routine questions. Such numbers are considered appealing for companies to implement chatbots with the aim of streamlining and maximizing profits. An important aspect that can be neglected by companies is quality, which is an essential factor for customers' user experience. In this context, the user experience creates satisfaction and repeated use. An understanding of chatbot quality increases the chances of successfully implementing and developing the right tool with the aim of satisfying customers both efficiently and qualitatively in customer service. From such a perspective, the survey has concentrated around the user experience for a chatbot interaction. How is the quality of the user experience and what factors have a direct impact on chatbots in customer service? What characteristics should a chatbot possess to enhance the user experience? The survey has been carried out with the choice of a multimethod research with a qualitative approach. Some quantitative measures have also been used to concretize certain values, but the main focus area has been on the survey of the user experience from a qualitative perspective. Two theoretical frameworks have been used to analyze the user experience of chatbots. These focus on qualitative factors that have an effect on the user experience. The result shows that the quality of the user experience is considered high on the selected chatbot for simpler questions and less complex matters. The factors response-relevance, response-comprehensibility, dialogue-result and dialogue-efficiency showed a relatively high user experience. The characteristics that should be implemented in a chatbot are understandability, reliability, responsiveness and assurance. This creates a confirmation, satisfaction and repeat use for the user experience. Influential factors that have been analyzed in the survey are the user's question formulation. A qualitative advantage is created for users who formulate formal questions, while more personal questions increase the margin of error of the chatbot's interpretive ability to answer the question. The perspective can be seen as a lack of quality from the chatbot or as a missing feature. A final factor impacted in the user experience is technology anxiety, which has been shown to be lowered for users after interacting with a chatbot. Users do not have a high sense of difficulty to use a chatbot but may hold a sense of uncertainty and discouragement. With greater experience and a perceived positive user experience of a chatbot, these factors are drastically reduced. The 5 conclusion leads to the user experience being of high quality in terms of interaction with a chatbot, while several influencing factors are highlighted. Future research is recommended to replicate the study on a larger scale and with more personal and complicated cases for analysis of the user experience of chatbot quality.

Customer retention is crucial for a firms long term success and its application and dynamics are particularly interesting in the context of high growth firms. High growth firms are commonly characterised by having limited resources and operating in constant change in structure and routines which can affect the way the firms are able to work with customer retention. This research aims to investigate how high growth firms perceive customer retention. This research also aims to identify major difficulties high growth firms have working with customer retention as well as what strategies are used to counteract those difficulties. In order to investigate this topic, a qualitative study based on data from semi-structured interviews with seven high growth firms was conducted. My finding suggest that high growth firms has a great prioritising on customer retention. The findings also identified that limited resources and changing structure and routines is a challenge for high growth firms working with customer retention. This research identified key strategies high growth firms use to work with customer retention, being a quality customer service, customer focused culture, and relationship bonds.

Kundtjänster har länge drivits av människor, under de senaste åren har det övergått till att utvecklas till en mer teknikdriven process. För många organisationer är virtuella chatbotar det första steget i interaktionen med en kund vilket gör att det blir viktigt att förstå hur chatbotarna påverkar användaren. Nya psykologiska hinder har tillkommit och användarna upplever ofta chatbotar som opersonliga och att de brister i att ge en känsla av mänsklig kontakt. Chatbotar behöver utvecklas och kommunicera mer som människor om de ska kunna nyttjas till sin fulla potential. Syftet med studien är att undersöka vilka identifierade designelement som stödjer känslan av mänsklig kontakt hos chatbotar. Studien genomfördes med en designorienterad forskningsansats där tre stycken centrala kategorier av mänskliga egenskaper identifierades; personlighet och förmågan att uttrycka känslor, utseende och kroppsspråk samt användandet av språk. Dessa i sin tur utvecklades till elva designelement som kunde undersökas med hjälp av en prototyp. Studiens bidrag har resulterat i totalt sju stycken designförslag som utvecklare rekommenderas att följa om de vill stödja känslan av mänsklig kontakt hos chatbotar. / Customer service has long been operated by humans, but in recent years it has become more dependent on technology driven processes. For many organizations, virtual chatbots are the first step of interaction with a customer, which makes it important to understand what impact the chatbot has on the user. New psychological barriers have been added and users often perceive chatbots as impersonal and they lack a sense of human contact. Chatbots need to communicate more like humans if they are to be used to their full potential. The purpose of this study is to investigate which of the identified design elements enhances the feeling of human contact in chatbots. The study was carried out with a design-oriented research approach where three central categories of human characteristics were identified; personality and the ability to express emotions, appearance and body language as well as the use of language. These in turn resulted in eleven design elements that could be examined with the help of a prototype. The final contributions of the study are seven design suggestions that chatbot developers are advised to follow if they want to support the feeling of human contact in chatbots.

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Background: The concept of the chatbot has been around for nearly 60 years. However, service providers have recently increased the integration of chatbots in distinct industries due to the growth in digitalization and advanced technology. Not only that, chatbots can support service providers in becoming more efficient and reducing overhead costs. As a result, this transformation in service offering has influenced customers in various forms. Thus, this study explores Generation Z's perceptions and experiences using chatbots, with a focus on the influence these systems have on their trust. There is little information about this topic, and this study should aid organizations in learning how to better meet customer expectations, which could lead to more promising customer satisfaction in the future. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate customer perceptions and trust in chatbots which is a form of advanced technology in a customer service setting. The aim is to gather empirical evidence from customers' social reality to answer the research question of this investigation. Method: This research conducted an exploratory qualitative study with an inductive research approach. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 respondents from Generation Z, located in Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, and Germany to achieve a broad perspective regarding their experiences with chatbots. The respondents were selected using the snowball and networking sampling method. The research paradigm of this study is interpretivism, which supports the examination in exploring and gaining knowledge about this phenomenon. Conclusion: The aim of this study was achieved, and the gathered empirical evidence presents further knowledge regarding customers' experiences with chatbots. This study and other relevant examinations prove that the increase of digitalization in customer service settings has an influence on customer experience. Primarily, the empirical findings indicate that there is an overall lack of trust in advanced technology due to the issue of privacy. Although Generation Z has grown up alongside the worldwide digital transformation, they remain cynical and distrustful of the future of technology. Thus, it occurs that there is a lack of customer trust in chatbots. However, this is confirmed by the fact that customers are sharing low pre-expectations towards chatbots. As a result, customers experience a more dissatisfied feeling towards the service provider. On the other hand, the empirical findings reveal that customers' loyalty remains unaltered towards businesses.

This dissertation focused on identifying personality traits, as measured by the Occupational Personality Questionnaire 32 (OPQ32r) that may act as job performance predictors for customer service centre (CSC) agents in the banking industry. The purpose of this research was to determine whether there are relationships between certain personality traits of customer service centre agents and their job performance. Purposeful sampling was used to involve the entire agent base as participants (N=89). A quantitative empirical study was conducted in which the relationship between the independent variable (personality) and dependent variable (job performance) was investigated. Several personality traits that predicted job performance were identified. Identifying the personality characteristics of individuals who are successful in a CSC environment should aid organisations in creating a better/suitable fit between employees and the requirements of such an environment, thereby improving organisational outcomes. This research adds to current literature gaps in establishing the relationship between personality traits and performance in the context of a customer relations management call centre environment. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M.Com. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)

Poor quality of information and forecasting create a number of problems for manufacturing companies, such as poor planning of products and insufficient service levels, which leads to increased inventory and stock holding or stockouts and increased total costs. Cussons (UK) Limited is experiencing precisely these problems. Apart from these problems normally associated with forecasting demand for fast moving consumer goods there is an additional problem of reconciling the Western calendar with the Muslim calendar, and a recognition of the effects that Muslim religious holidays, as opposed to Christian religious holidays, have on demand. Muslim religious holidays rotate backwards with regard to the Western calendar, but in fact they occur at known dates and therefore the effect they have on demand for products can be taken into consideration when attempting to forecast demand. An additional problem that influences Cussons' sales in the market is the seasonal pattern of demand. Due to this, there is an increase in demand for Cussons' products during summer months. From the analysis of both data sets it was identified that the warehouse movement data is less variable and more reliable for business forecasting than order data. In this thesis, these forecasting problems are examined as a case study, focusing on these particular problems. To overcome these problems and to improve business forecasting of Cussons' products in the Middle East market, a forecasting strategy has been suggested which will enable Cusson's to reduce the inventories throughout the supply chain and to improve their customer's service.

O setor de serviços, onde os bancos estão inseridos, se caracteriza pelo o uso intenso de recursos humanos, grande heterogeneidade de atividades e simultaneidade entre produção e consumo de produtos/serviços. Este contexto torna bastante complexo e desafiador a proposição de especificações de qualidade que contribuam com o aumento da satisfação e da lealdade dos clientes. Embasado em fundamentação teórica sobre os temas setor de serviços, qualidade, satisfação, imagem corporativa, lealdade e valores humanos, este trabalho se propôs a buscar uma melhor compreensão sobre como estes fatores atuam em uma agência bancária. O estudo foi executado em uma agência bancária de médio porte localizada na região metropolitana de São Paulo. Para cumprir com os objetivos de pesquisa foram realizadas entrevistas, observações durante o expediente bancário e pesquisa de campo com 202 clientes. A fase qualitativa, composta pelas entrevistas e pelas observações, foi transcrita e consolidada segundo a relevância das informações colhidas; na fase quantitativa, após a coleta de dados, foram realizadas análises estatísticas em contexto univariado, bivariado e multivariado por meio das técnicas de Análise fatorial, Análise de conglomerados, Análise de regressão logística e Modelagem de equações estruturais. Os resultados indicam que a qualidade funcional é o fator mais importante da qualidade na agência bancária objeto de estudo. O estudo demonstrou, também, que a capacidade de compreender as necessidades individuais, um relacionamento comercial pautado na transparência e na integridade e o valor humano de responsabilidade sócio-ambiental contribuem na diferenciação entre clientes leais e não leais a agência bancária em questão. O trabalho também indicou que há uma relação direta entre os construtos Lealdade, Qualidade, Satisfação e Valores humanos. / The service sector, in which banks have been inserted, is characterized by the intense use of human resources, heterogeneity and simultaneity of activities between production and consumption of products / services. This condition makes it quite complex and challenging proposing quality specifications that contributes to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. Based in theoretical grounding on service\'s sector main themes, such as quality, satisfaction, loyalty, corporate image and human values issues, this study proposes to seek a better understanding of how these factors work in a bank. The study had been performed in a midsize bank agency located in the metropolitan region of São Paulo. To accomplish research goals, interviews, observations during business hours and fieldwork surveys were made with 202 clients. In the qualitative step, which is consisted by the interviews and observations, the information has been transcribed and consolidated according to relevance. In the quantitative step, after data collection, statistical analyzes were performed in univariate context, bivariate and multivariate analysis through factorial analysis techniques, cluster analysis, logistics regression analysis and structural equation modeling. The results suggests that functional quality is the most important factor in the quality of bank\'s agency object of study. The study also evidenced that the ability to understand individual needs, a business relationship built on transparency and integrity and the human value of social and environmental responsibility contributes in differentiating loyal and non-loyal agency\'s customers. The study also indicated that there is a direct relation between the Loyalty, Quality, Satisfaction and human values constructs.