Exploring the Impact of Digital Humans on the Customer Experience

The emergence of digital humans in customer-facing roles presents significant challenges in creating believable and effective interactions. While existing research addresses various aspects of digital human development, there remains a critical gap in understanding and implementing believability in customer experience contexts. This research develops and validates a comprehensive framework for digital human believability, addressing both theoretical foundations and practical implementation challenges.
The study's significance is underscored by industry projections, with Gartner forecasting that by 2025, over 50% of organisations will prioritise digital human development over traditional chatbots. Furthermore, Allied Market Research projects the global digital human market to reach $527.58 million by 2030, highlighting the urgent need for structured approaches to digital human implementation.
Through Design Science Research methodology, this study develops a multi-dimensional believability framework encompassing behavioural, personality, appearance, and environmental aspects. The research employs a four-phase incremental approach. The first increment synthesises theoretical foundations through expert validation. The second increment refines framework components through empirical testing and stakeholder workshops. The final increment validates the framework through digital human implementations in a higher education context.
The research advances the theoretical understanding of digital humans in three key areas. First, it establishes believability as an important construct in human-digital human interaction, extending beyond traditional usability metrics. Second, it demonstrates how customer experience dimensions can be systematically integrated into digital human design. Third, it provides a theoretical basis for evaluating digital human effectiveness in customer-facing roles. Methodologically, it demonstrates the effectiveness of an incremental approach to framework development and validation. Practically, it provides organisations with a structured approach for designing and evaluating digital human implementations.