Examining chatbot customer experience and perceptions in the digital age in generations Y and Z perspectives

The rapidly changing consumer behavior in the digitalizing world, which is the result of the technology age, requires companies and brands to make innovative decisions. This digital transformation has revealed the importance of the concept of "customer experience". Adoption of artificial intelligence supported digital smart systems has a strategic importance for brands in today's world where mutual interaction with customers and real-time marketing are gaining importance. Chatbots are at the forefront of these smart systems. Chatbots; It is expressed as a dialogue-based computer program developed with artificial intelligence technologies, in which voice or text messaging interfaces are used. This thesis mainly emphasizes the importance of chatbots. The aim of the thesis is to determine the chatbot experiences of Y and Z generation customers and their perceptions as a result. The need for technology and the experiential differences of these two separate generations will shed light on how brands should determine their chatbot strategies. A total of 14 people from two different generations were interviewed to seek answers to semi-structured questions. At the end of the research, it was examined in categories by using the descriptive analysis method. According to the results obtained; While the Y generation perceives the storage of user data by chatbots as a threat to privacy, it has been concluded that the Z generation does not perceive any privacy threat against chatbots. In addition, it has been determined that while the Z generation finds the answers given by the chatbots satisfactory, the majority of the Y generation does not find the answers given by the chatbots satisfactory. The biggest difference between the two generations is that the Z generation has an awareness of the qualities of chatbots in Turkey compared to the Y generation and they trust chatbots.