The Application of Chatbots at the Digital Workplace in Businesses - Empirical Insights and Design Recommendations for Business Chatbots
by Raphael Meyer von Wolff
Date of Examination:2022-03-18
Date of issue:2022-06-17
Advisor:Prof. Dr. Matthias Schumann
Referee:Prof. Dr. Matthias Schumann
Referee:Prof. Dr. Lutz M. Kolbe
Referee:Prof. Dr. Jan Muntermann
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Abstract
English
Driven by the ongoing digitalization, businesses and work procedures change, established paper-based ways of working vanish, and new forms of digital collaboration or office and working structures are emerging. Besides positive impacts, negative consequences emerge like information and application overload or new IT systems that overwhelm employees. To address the problems and changing requirements, modern individual user-centered application systems tailored to tasks are needed to support employees in their work in a targeted manner or to provide digital assistance. For this, chatbot research receives a lot of attention in the last years and the technology is increasingly being used in everyday private life. Thereby, employees should use the systems intuitively without further training by natural language, and the chatbot adapts itself to the respective user. However, the application of chatbots for business processes as they occur regularly in employees' working days received less to no attention so far, resulting in missing design recommendations and unachievable benefits. Therefore, this doctoral thesis addresses the adoption of chatbots at the digital workplace in businesses by examining the topic with a strong practice-oriented focus. The thesis is grounded on seven research studies and several scientific approaches and methodologies. In doing so, the state of the art for chatbots at the digital workplaces is examined. Based on this, possible application areas and corresponding tasks, as well as objectives, their relations to each other, and influencing factors and challenges are outlined and described. From the design-oriented perspective, it is shown how chatbots should be designed for the three exemplary use cases information acquisition, IT-support, and business processes and which effects can be expected both from a user’s and the organizational perspective. The thesis is finished with the suggestion of a procedure model for chatbot projects in businesses.
Keywords: Chatbot; Digital Workplace; Conversational Interface; Design Science Research; Business; Application Areas; Objectives; Challenges; Design Recommendations; Evaluation; Outcomes; Structured Procedure Model