Exploring the effect of AI warm response on consumer reuse intention in service failure

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been widely used across diverse service sectors, including tourism and hospitality. However, service failures with AI engagement are inevitable. How to provide service recovery for AI service failures to increase consumer reuse intention is an important issue. The current study investigated AI service recovery, examining the remediation effect of AI warm response on service failure. Through four experiments, the results suggested that AI high warm response increased consumer reuse intention in service recovery, and social presence mediated this relationship between AI warm response and consumer reuse intention. Moreover, the positive recovery effect of AI warm response was significant only under conditions of low service failure severity. Additionally, the compensatory effect of human intervention in service recovery was significant exclusively when following an AI low warm response, rather than a high warm response. The findings not only extend the knowledge regarding the reuse of AI agents after service failure but also reveal the potential of AI warm response in service recovery strategies. Furthermore, they also encourage AI service providers to elevate the warmth level of AI agents’ response to recover general service failure and minimize the reliance on human intervention.