The Influence of Trust Factors on Customer Motivation to Use Virtual Assistant in Indonesian Telecommunication Company

Abstract

In this era, the existence of chatbot / virtual assistant as the supporting features of customer service is becoming a trend to improve the service quality for customers. Ironically, there are still few people that use this service due to their distrust and lack of information that makes them unmotivated to use it. Customers prefer to communicate directly with human customer service. Therefore, conducting the research with the objective to identify the factors that influence the user’s trust and the influences of trust on customer motivation to use is important. In this study, the author focuses on one of the virtual assistants in Indonesia telecommunication sector which is Veronika (virtual assistant of Telkomsel). By using mixed method, the data is analyzed by using manual coding and PLS-SEM. The results of this study indicate that there are 4 of 7 factors that influence user’s trust. Among them are interpretation and advice, human-likeness, security & privacy, and self-presentation. With the results obtained, this study also presents the results that users' trust in virtual assistants can increase customer motivation to use.

Keywords: Chatbot, Customer Motivation, Customer Service, Mixed Method, PLS-SEM, Trust, Telkomsel, Virtual Assistant