The current research demonstrates how conversational robo advisors as opposed to static, non-conversational robo advisors alter perceptions of trust, the evaluation of a financial services firm, and consumer financial decision making. We develop and empirically test a novel conceptualization of conversational robo advisors building on prior work in human-to-human communication and interpersonal psychology, showing that conversational robo advisors cause greater levels of affective trust compared to non-conversational robo advisors and evoke a more benevolent evaluation of a financial services firm. We demonstrate that this increase in affective trust not only affects firm perception (in terms of benevolence attributions or a more positively-valenced onboarding experience), but has important implications for investor behavior, such as greater recommendation acceptance and an increase in asset allocation toward conversational robo advisors. These findings have important implications for research on trust formation between humans and machines, the effective design of conversational robo advisors, and public policy in the digital economy.

Voice-based interfaces provide new opportunities for firms to interact with consumers along the customer journey. The current work demonstrates across four studies that voice-based (as opposed to text-based) interfaces promote more flow-like user experiences, resulting in more positively-valenced service experiences, and ultimately more favorable behavioral firm outcomes (i.e., contract renewal, conversion rates, and consumer sentiment). Moreover, we also provide evidence for two important boundary conditions that reduce such flow-like user experiences in voice-based interfaces (i.e., semantic disfluency and the amount of conversational turns). The findings of this research highlight how fundamental theories of human communication can be harnessed to create more experiential service experiences with positive downstream consequences for consumers and firms. These findings have important practical implications for firms that aim at leveraging the potential of voice-based interfaces to improve consumers’ service experiences and the theory-driven “conversational design” of voice-based interfaces.