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My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too

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Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too

#51

Post by vertis »

ben_w wrote: post #35
vertis wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find those chat boxes to be completely irritating. Doubly so if it doesn't go straight to a human, there are ones that want to shove you through the crappy zendesk "are you sure this helpdesk article doesn't answer your question" flow. Anything that pops up and interrupts me while I'm reading something else is pretty much a deal breaker. Having to stop what I'm doing to hit a little X and get back to it has cost a…

> I find those chat boxes to be completely irritating. The supermajority here does, or so I would guess. We aren’t representative, and that’s important to remember when designing user interfaces.

There is a chance of survivorship bias. You get a bunch of messages through the chat interface and all of a sudden you believe it adds value, when in reality you're potentially annoying a whole bunch of users that aren't necessarily telling you that they're annoyed.

A favourite story[1] (and I can't remember where I read it first) is the WWII bombers that the US military were trying to understand how to protect by analyzing the bullet holes. But the bullet holes only told part of the story. Any bomber that made it home to be analyzed had only been hit in a non-critical place.

I'm not saying there isn't a place for chat, because I believe that they're absolutely is. A good, direct to the person chat, or unobtrusive ability to reach out is great.

Shoving it in my face and breaking the flow of what I was doing is not.

While I agree that HN readers aren't representative, I have a hard time believing that other people don't behave the same way when presented with annoying website behaviours (even if they later want the contact with the human).

I've seen behind the scene of businesses that get customers asking stupid stupid questions, so I also understand the where the zendesk 'are you sure this doesn't answer your question' comes from. Doesn't make it any less annoying when applied badly to expert audiences.

[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too

#52

Post by mrkwse »

belzebalex wrote: post #17
dheera wrote: post #8

I absolutely despise those pop-up "Can I help you" boxes on product websites (usually Intercom). It completely disrupts my flow as a reader in trying to understand the product. That attention disruption got so bad I blocked Intercom and their ilk via injected CSS rules. I really want to take it a step further and write a plug in to interface a chat bot with the human on the other end and waste their time so sites beg…

I thought like you in the past. I only installed the Crisp chatbox (with no popup) on my SaaS and was very surprised with the results: I got more contact from users through it than through Email or Telegram. I got a lot of feedback and was able to help many potential customers. As developers who never need help, we tend to forget that some people might do, and that a Chatbox that annoys us can help them.

> As developers who never need help, we tend to forget that some people might do

I think one of the most regularly overlooked areas in which people may need help is through accessibility features. I'm not neurodiverse myself, but things that pop-up and animate can be problematic for those that are.

Having the option there may be useful, but the intrusive pop-ups that the previous comment referred to do not seem useful to me, and could even greater confound the experience for groups of people. I'd expect the intrusive features are mostly driven by conversion rates rather than usability.

Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too

#53

Post by TeMPOraL »

gmueckl wrote: post #38
BeniBoy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminded me of this experiment [1]. Augment your CTR with simulated mouse cursor /s. But yes, the home page is unusable for me too.. [1]: https://javier.xyz/control-user-cursor/

I can barely fathom that allowing this has even crossed browser developer's minds. This feature is just evil from the start and every browser feature, no matter how trivial or benign will eventually be abused.

> This feature is just evil from the start and every browser feature, no matter how trivial or benign will eventually be abused.

That's the problem, though. Motivated humans can weaponize anything. We spend too much time trying to stave off the impossible, instead of going after the abusers - which today often are the presumably legitimate businesses, as a lot of feature misuse became standard business practice.

Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too

#54

Post by netsharc »

gmueckl wrote: post #38
BeniBoy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminded me of this experiment [1]. Augment your CTR with simulated mouse cursor /s. But yes, the home page is unusable for me too.. [1]: https://javier.xyz/control-user-cursor/

I can barely fathom that allowing this has even crossed browser developer's minds. This feature is just evil from the start and every browser feature, no matter how trivial or benign will eventually be abused.

I'm surprised it hasn't been. Someone should just implement this on an online store, so that your mouse doesn't appear to be over the "Buy now" button, but in actuality the click would register as clicking that button.

Or better, the click would cast a vote for the candidate the developer prefers...

Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too

#56

Post by dheera »

corobo wrote: post #41
dheera wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep the following part is fine with me, it's hiding the mouse cursor that is alienating. I would have thought it to be OK for a website to pick from a few standard system cursors (pointer, hand, I-bar, move, resize, etc.) but not no cursor.

If this gets traction please remember to allow hiding cursor if the user has full screened something! -- person trying to watch a video without a lil pointer in the way

Or maybe the browser should implement hiding the cursor after 10 seconds of inactivity if the user has full-screened something.

If a website made your cursor disappear immediately upon full screen that would be freaky, as if you lost control of your machine, thus, I don't think the websites should have this capability.

Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too

#57

Post by bobm_kite9 »

baxtr wrote: post #11

Chatbots are dead, long live chatbots! I firmly believe we are going through the “through of disillusionment” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle ). We need to figure out ways to really bring value to people and not just raise money for the next AI based Chatbot system!

This is exactly right - and that initial website was written during the "peak of inflated expectations" part.

I still think that chatbots provide an entirely new way of interacting with software. We're very used to dividing our desktop up into windows, and giving each process it's own two-dimensional real estate.

Conversation-oriented UI design fundamentally is different to that: you are escaping the 2D arrangement and allowing applications to collaborate with teams of people in a totally new way.

Here is something I wrote about that: https://riskfirst.org/complexity/Betting-On-RPA

Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too

#58

Post by crispyporkbites »

Chatbots suck, because AI just isn't good enough or empowered enough to actually help in 99% of requests.

ChatBOXES on the other hand are amazing, a few reasons why:

- You can't accidentally hang up and have to re-dial and wait on hold

- There's an incentive for the company to respond while the customer is there, because they might disappear at any moment (unlike email)

- There's a record in writing

- It works with people with poor language skills

- No hold music & you can see where you are in the queue

- Support teams can scale by handling multiple conversations at once and using copy/paste from scripts, terms etc.

- You can include hyperlinks, screenshots etc. to make things super clear or open up other tools (e.g. screen share)

- Contact details, email address etc. can't be misheard

- No bad signal / fuzzy line

- You can data mine the requests to figure out common requests and optimize for them

Long live the chatbox!

Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too

#59

Post by partyboat1586 »

mrkwse wrote: post #52
belzebalex wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought like you in the past. I only installed the Crisp chatbox (with no popup) on my SaaS and was very surprised with the results: I got more contact from users through it than through Email or Telegram. I got a lot of feedback and was able to help many potential customers. As developers who never need help, we tend to forget that some people might do, and that a Chatbox that annoys us can help them.

> As developers who never need help, we tend to forget that some people might do I think one of the most regularly overlooked areas in which people may need help is through accessibility features. I'm not neurodiverse myself, but things that pop-up and animate can be problematic for those that are. Having the option there may be useful, but the intrusive pop-ups that the previous comment referred to do not seem usefu…

Which neruological condition(s) cause sensitivity to popup animations? Not questioning the validity of the claim just interested to learn more.

Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too

#60

Post by sebslomski »

Great read, Adrian! I've been following your work since you launched the UX Bear.

To sum up my experience with chatbots: I've had deeper conversations with clippy than with most chatbots.

Still, I strongly believe that guidance is needed online, especially in E-Commerce. That's why I've recently (in fact, we are signing our seed round later today) created Neocom [1], which merges the good parts about chatbots with real expert knowledge.

[1] https://neocom.ai

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