“Yes, I am human:” learnings from fast customer service via live chat
blog.indextank.com
“Yes, I am human:” learnings from fast customer service via live chat
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Re: “Yes, I am human:” learnings from fast customer service via live chat
#2That will work until an AI can pass the Turing Test.
Re: “Yes, I am human:” learnings from fast customer service via live chat
#3I used to work for a competitor of Olark's and I can confirm this happens all the time. What's funny is that there are two types of companies:
1) Trusts their well-paid chat operators and allows them to type freely.
2) Force-feeds their operators 'canned responses' (as are used in email support) and doesn't encourage them to move off script.
#2 is always what marketing departments want, but it was always worse for the customer. The operator's response was too quick (a paragraph of text hastily selected from a recommended response), there were no misspellings, and they used PR speak that normal humans don't use. Often people would respond, "are you a person?" and some small group would ask questions specifically designed to trip up a bot.
My advice is to allow the people talking to your customer to use a modest amount of slang (a smiley or an occasional lol is fine if the customer is in a happy mood) - let them make a few misspellings - and encourage them to really read the response and even empathize with a customer. Marketing departments hate this idea, but in the end the feeling of a connection to another human is worth the risk of offending a grammar nazi.
Re: “Yes, I am human:” learnings from fast customer service via live chat
#4I used to work for a competitor of Olark's and I can confirm this happens all the time. What's funny is that there are two types of companies: 1) Trusts their well-paid chat operators and allows them to type freely. 2) Force-feeds their operators 'canned responses' (as are used in email support) and doesn't encourage them to move off script. #2 is always what marketing departments want, but it was always worse for th…
Yep, "legacy" PR based on controlling the message is just fundamentally flawed. It is time for candor and honesty.
Re: “Yes, I am human:” learnings from fast customer service via live chat
#5That will work until an AI can pass the Turing Test.
.. there may be more important things to worry about when that happens.
Re: “Yes, I am human:” learnings from fast customer service via live chat
#6I worked customer service for "a" major MMO for a while. People who got asked if they were robots were generally behaving like robots: using macros (pre-written responses) to respond to questions even when the answer didn't properly fit, sending responses (even proper responses) to questions faster than people generally type, or abusing the auto-name-fill-in shortcut to fill in the character name in every sentence.
In short, there's very likely to be an actual problem when your customers ask if you're a robot ... not a "cute" problem like you were too quick to answer their initial request.
Re: “Yes, I am human:” learnings from fast customer service via live chat
#7I used to work for a competitor of Olark's and I can confirm this happens all the time. What's funny is that there are two types of companies: 1) Trusts their well-paid chat operators and allows them to type freely. 2) Force-feeds their operators 'canned responses' (as are used in email support) and doesn't encourage them to move off script. #2 is always what marketing departments want, but it was always worse for th…
If you're talking to a person who can't deviate from the script, you're not really talking to a person -- you're talking to the script. It's like an AI, but clunkier.
Re: “Yes, I am human:” learnings from fast customer service via live chat
#8I added this to http://paggstack.com since the very beginning, and I swear, it's the most commonly asked question over any other. I always try to put some humour in my response, but damn! We need a solution ;)
Re: “Yes, I am human:” learnings from fast customer service via live chat
#9I worked customer service for "a" major MMO for a while. People who got asked if they were robots were generally behaving like robots: using macros (pre-written responses) to respond to questions even when the answer didn't properly fit, sending responses (even proper responses) to questions faster than people generally type, or abusing the auto-name-fill-in shortcut to fill in the character name in every sentence. I…
Not exactly. As you see in the transcript on the blog, we responded with a simple "Hi, how can I help you?" and then we're asked if we were a robot. We don't use pre-written responses, nor do anything else like you suggest. We're just online, working away.
Re: “Yes, I am human:” learnings from fast customer service via live chat
#10I used to work for a competitor of Olark's and I can confirm this happens all the time. What's funny is that there are two types of companies: 1) Trusts their well-paid chat operators and allows them to type freely. 2) Force-feeds their operators 'canned responses' (as are used in email support) and doesn't encourage them to move off script. #2 is always what marketing departments want, but it was always worse for th…
Our development team at IndexTank handles our customer questions. The training they've received comes from working alongside client development teams for years (our team has been together for 4+ years handling search problems for many companies). So we trust each other to type freely.
The misspellings is an interesting suggestion. Since our team originates from Argentina, English is our second language, and we do make mistakes. But we try not to. But now maybe we should ! Thanks for your advice.