Organizations are increasingly delegating customer inquiries to speech dialog systems (SDSs) to save personnel resources. However, customers often report frustration when interacting with SDSs due to poorly designed solutions. Despite these issues, design knowledge for SDSs in customer service remains elusive. To address this research gap, we employ the design science approach and devise a design theory for SDSs in customer service. The design theory, including 14 requirements and five design principles, draws on the principles of dialog theory and undergoes validation in three iterations using five hypotheses. A summative evaluation comprising a two-phase experiment with 205 participants yields positive results regarding the user experience of the artifact. This study contributes to design knowledge for SDSs in customer service and supports practitioners striving to implement similar systems in their organizations.

组织越来越多地将客户查询委托给语音对话系统 (SDS) 以节省人力资源。但是，由于解决方案设计不当，客户在与 SDS 交互时经常会感到沮丧。尽管存在这些问题，客户服务中的 SDS 设计知识仍然难以捉摸。为了解决这一研究差距，我们采用设计科学方法并为客户服务中的 SDS 设计了一种设计理论。设计理论包括 14 条要求和 5 条设计原则，借鉴了对话理论的原则，并使用五个假设在三个迭代中进行了验证。包含 205 名参与者的两阶段实验的总结性评估在工件的用户体验方面产生了积极的结果。