Gender-based conversational interface preferences in live chat systems for financial services

Chatbots have become an important part of the financial services ecosystem. To accommodate their rise, many financial firms have turned to button-input interfaces that simplify the customer-chatbot interaction. While prior work suggests that these interfaces do indeed increase the efficiency of communication, the present research investigates whether such efficiency comes at the cost of some consumers' satisfaction. Specifically, the current work draws on literature in gender-based communication styles to explore whether males versus females react differently to button-input versus more traditional text-input chatbot interfaces. Across two studies, results indicate that males evaluate button-input interfaces to be less usable than females and that this preference is reversed for more traditional text-based live chat interfaces. Underlying this effect, males perceive button-input chatbot interfaces as having lower controllability. These findings are the first to indicate that consumer demographics (such as gender) can influence usability evaluations of different chatbot interfaces.