Chatbots have become an integral part of digital customer service strategies across banking, e-commerce, telecommunications, and hospitality. While organizations increasingly adopt AI-based conversational agents to reduce cost and improve responsiveness, the ultimate success of such systems depends on how customers perceive and accept them. This study examines customer perception towards chatbot-based customer services, with specific objectives of analyzing customer satisfaction, evaluating the effectiveness of chatbots in improving customer experience, and examining the level of query redressal achieved through chatbot interactions. A descriptive research design was adopted, and primary data were collected from 400 respondents who had prior experience using chatbot-based customer support, using a structured, Likert-scale questionnaire distributed through Google Forms, social media, and email. Convenience sampling was used to select respondents. Data were analyzed using percentage analysis, Chi-square tests, one-sample t-tests, and linear regression. Results show that respondents are predominantly young (21–30 years), educated, and moderately to highly satisfied with chatbot services, particularly regarding response speed and 24/7 availability. Chi-square tests confirmed statistically significant associations between customer responses and all measured service dimensions (p < 0.05). One-sample t-tests revealed that all effectiveness indicators exceeded the neutral midpoint, with availability recorded as the strongest attribute (mean = 4.02). Regression analysis showed that the proposed predictors explained 70.9% of the variance in overall chatbot effectiveness, with issue-resolution speed as the strongest predictor. The study concludes that chatbot services meaningfully enhance customer experience but perform best when combined with a pathway to human support for complex queries, and offers practical suggestions for improving chatbot accuracy, usability, and emotional responsiveness.
