Siri, Alexa, and Other Digital Assistants: A Study of Customer Satisfaction With Artificial Intelligence Applications

Siri, Alexa, and other digital assistants are rapidly becoming embraced by consumers and the adoption is projected to grow from 390 million to 1.8 billion for the period of 2015 to 2021. Digital assistants are offering benefits to consumers while also proving to be a disruptive technology for businesses. Coupling digital assistants with other artificial intelligence technologies offers the potential to transform companies by creating more efficient business processes, automating complex tasks, and improving the customer service experience. Businesses have begun integrating this technology into their operations with the expectation of achieving significant productivity gains. Customer satisfaction has been discussed extensively throughout marketing literature. Yet, there is little empirical evidence of customer satisfaction with digital assistants. This study used PLS-SEM to analyze 244 survey responses obtained from a cross-section of consumers. Using the Expectations Confirmation Theory as its foundation, the study identified that expectations and confirmation of expectations substantially explained customer satisfaction with digital assistants. For practice, the study provides guidance which allows firms to prioritize marketing and managerial activities. Firms should focus priorities on assisting digital assistant users to become aware of new skill capabilities while also providing relevant examples of how these skills can be used to meet user needs. In addition, priorities should be focused on assisting users with understanding how the average person can use digital assistants to perform more than just mundane tasks with relative ease. These priorities were identified as areas of high importance for customer satisfaction and require performance improvements