Facial or non-facial? The impact of emoji types on chatbots’ service recovery

Purpose This study aims to explore the impact of the types of emojis used in chatbots’ service recovery on consumers’ willingness to forgive. Design/methodology/approach Two experiments were conducted to test the proposed hypotheses. Findings The results show that chatbots using negative facial emojis are more sincere and reflect on higher levels of forgiveness than response using negative non-facial emojis. This study also explores the moderating influence of recovery strategies in the proposed relationship. Emojis only influence consumers’ willingness to forgive when the recovery strategy is symbolic recovery. Research limitations/implications This study mainly focuses on comparing the overall effect of chatbots’ use of emojis’ types on consumers’ willingness to forgive and fails to explore in depth the differences in the effect of chatbots’ use of emojis’ types on consumers’ satisfaction with recovery under various contexts or conditions. Practical implications First, the use of emojis can alleviate the dissatisfaction of the user and increase the user’s satisfaction with the service. Second, this study found that the types of emojis used in chatbots’ service recovery have an impact on consumers’ willingness to forgive. Finally, the recovery strategy adopted by enterprises also affects consumers’ willingness to forgive chatbots’ service recovery. Originality/value This study provides important insights into the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions of the effective use of emojis in chatbots’ service recovery.