If you are a Millennial, congratulations, you belong to the first generation to grow up surrounded by the Internet. Whether chatting with friends and strangers on mIRC or MSN Messenger, setting up a profile on MySpace or sharing all your feelings and emotions on Tumblr, the Internet has come into our daily lives as an escape and safe space for an entire generation who were first able to communicate online.
Since gaining popularity in the early 1990s, it has continued to evolve, and today there are more and more ways to communicate online, from social media to a host of messaging apps.
Studies show that we tend to tell more about ourselves to people we've just met online than to people we've just met face-to-face. You may have even experienced this yourself when chatting on social media or message boards.
But could this feature of the Internet explain why some people prefer to communicate with bots rather than other people?
Let's go online
The Internet has brought many changes to our daily lives, it has allowed people to develop new ways to interact with each other. And it has several features that make it the preferred channel of communication for some people.
The same studies that show that we tend to reveal ourselves more online give a clue as to why this happens, and it's mostly due to the lack of social queues online. The Internet gives people a shield of anonymity behind which they can hide, allowing them to be who they want to be -- a completely different person or their truest self. This, in turn, can help people feel less constricted and more open to communication.
Also, the Internet is based on text messaging. Although you can use emoji or gifs to convey emotion or reinforce certain aspects of the message you are sending, the essence of it is text.
Face-to-face communication inevitably comes with non-verbal cues to analyze, such as eye rolling, frowning, and all sorts of facial and body expressions that can overwhelm expression or create feelings of embarrassment or misunderstanding. All of these things disappear online and have a positive effect on people's communication, especially those who suffer from social anxiety and prefer to form relationships online.
In addition, communicating online allows people to choose the pace of communication. Who likes awkward silence? In face-to-face communication there is a tendency to avoid them, but online people feel comfortable taking the time to think about the situation before responding to someone.
Finally, as mentioned at the beginning, the Internet is often an escape from everyday life and a safe space to communicate with others. Because of its ubiquity, it allows us to connect with people from all over the world and seek out communities with similar tastes or interests where we feel part of society.
The psychology behind chatbots
First, even though we know that there is no human on the other end of the communication, our brains are made to believe that interacting with a chatbot is really interacting with a human.
Today, even though technology has advanced considerably and some chatbots have come close to passing the Turing test, which tests the ability of a computer or machine to exhibit human qualities and intelligence, there is still no chatbot that can fully behave like a human. But they can exhibit personality and a sense of humor, which leads to the creation of a false perception of interaction and the attribution to the chatbot of human-like traits that are not there.
Second, our human brain usually prefers simplification over complexity, and interacting with a chatbot offers just that. Communicating with a bot is much easier because it uses only verbal cues, unlike human interaction, which involves emotional involvement and nonverbal cues that can be interpreted. After all, talking to a chatbot doesn't require much cognitive effort, which is what some of us sometimes want.
In this case, the satisfaction comes not from a deep and meaningful conversation or connection, but quite the opposite. Without the need for engagement or emotional attention, we still achieve what we want to get out of the interaction - whether it's finding an answer to a question or getting delivery news - and this detachment doesn't make us feel drained, as it sometimes does when interacting with a human.
Finally, interpersonal relationships come with power differences. When interacting with a chatbot, people expect that all power is in their hands, since there is no human on the other side, and they can control and lead the conversation as they wish. Even though it is an unconscious effort, people may end up feeling better about themselves, thinking that they have gained complete power in at least one interaction in their lives.
While this may involve some kind of emotional power play, the reasons for preferring interaction with a chatbot over a human may be more straightforward. For example, shy people or those who suffer from any form of social anxiety, if given the opportunity, are more likely to choose a chatbot over a phone call to interact with a company. Or maybe it's just that the younger generation, having grown up surrounded by technology and having many options at their disposal, naturally leans toward online means of communication.
Accepting interactions with chatbots
Why should you, as a businessperson, care about all of this? We already know that chatbots offer a huge number of benefits, but from a customer perspective, it's about giving people what they want. And that goes far beyond access to a 24/7 channel that provides quick answers.
If you think about the psychology behind chatbots and the factors that make communication online preferable to face-to-face communication, it's not surprising that some people are afraid to contact a company by phone or even by email, since even in the latter case, communication with a person is behind a secure screen. Having more options available only makes it easier for them and prevents companies from losing potential or current customers.
In fact, according to a survey conducted by BusinessWire, fifty-five percent of respondents said they would like to have a chatbot involved in the customer service process. That's more than half of customers, so that's saying a lot.
Now, we know that from a customer perspective, the reasons they would prefer to interact with a bot rather than an agent are much more related to convenience and time. But surely there will be those among them who are overcome by shyness or who simply don't like people, so the chatbot will certainly meet their communication needs.
Also, millennials are getting older, and since more than two-thirds of today's teenagers prefer to communicate with their friends online rather than in person, who knows what customers of the future will look like? Perhaps they will communicate exclusively with machines and forget about people altogether.
