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Customers don't want chat bots

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Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#21

Post by rcxdude »

Scarblac wrote: post #14
AstralStorm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most importantly, the chatbot cannot actually solve anything, it is not plugged into any functionality.

That's my feeling too, but maybe it's outdated? There's no real reason why they can't be.

there is plenty of reason why it shouldn't be. Generally speaking functionality is gated behind support (as opposed to being something you can just click a button on a website to do) because it requires at least some level of human judgement on whether a given action should be done (and there's still a whole class of attacks which are aimed against this process). Chat-bots will be even worse, because there will be an extremely consistent script than can be used for any given purpose.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#22

Post by AllegedAlec »

mjevans wrote: post #13
mgaunard wrote: post #7

As a customer you want someone to resolve your issue, which is mostly a matter of someone being responsible to file a ticket and ensure it gets solved. A chatbot has no responsibility, it is just a useless parrot of the documentation. It doesn't serve any useful purpose except worsening the experience for the customer.

The worst are the bots that can't figure out what you're trying to ask about and _refuse_ to turn over to a human because you the end user clearly aren't in what they are good at.

Had this experience with Vodaphone when I tried to set up my account and add my fucking phone number so I had insight in my bills. Didn't work. Got directed to a bot, which continually misunderstood me and no amount of prompting from me made them direct me to a human person.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#23

Post by DuckFeathers »

I used to not want chat bots because they were bad. I can imagine situations where I would prefer a chat bots over humans. For example, if it's a niche problem that a human would be unaware of and would have to look up, read, and verify taking a long time to respond, I would definitely want a chat bot or a bot assisted human.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#25

Post by seagullriffic »

In my experience they're useless because they're trained / limited to the FAQ and website you've already read to try to resolve your issue. The same with calling a helpline. Yes, I'm aware I can check your website for common questions. I'm calling you and need to speak to a human because the answer isn't there.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#26

Post by carlosrdrz »

> Instead, the reason people go to customer service is because of a question that’s so specific, or complicated, or gnarly in some respect, that there’s no way the app will have the answer: you need a human.

I can see the author probably hasn't done much customer service? I'd say maybe 1% of customer queries go in that direction.

I agree dealing with a bot in that situation sucks, but a big chunk of customer questions can probably be answered without human intervation by LLMs, assuming they have enough data about the organization and its products.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#27

Post by NikolaNovak »

RobotToaster wrote: post #24

People don't want a useless chat bots, more often than not they seem deliberately programmed to be obstructive. If you told it you wanted a refund for order xyz, and it immediately gave you a refund, I'm sure people would like it.

That's the thing.

At work, I hated an hr bot for years. But in the last year it became good and useful and I now like it.

If a bot gives me what I need I'll like it. If it only provides value for YOU though and makes MY life more difficult then I will not enjoy it very much.

Big problem with most bots is they don't have authority and they refuse to turn you over to someone who does. If I'm engaging with your customer service, it means I have an issue I need resolved. The worst bits are the equivalent of incessantly yet cheerfully asking me to restart my computer in an endless loop with no path out.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#28

Post by danparsonson »

fragmede wrote: post #18

OpenAI's ChatGPT has over hundred million users. Customers want chatbots just fine, they just don't want a shitty broken useless chatbot that's a waste of time. If it's a bot then respect the user and give it enough CPU resources to answer quickly.

This:

> OpenAI's ChatGPT has over hundred million users

in no way validates this:

> Customers want chatbots just fine

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#30

Post by jacknews »

Sure it's already dire, but who cares what customers want (especially the few 'difficult' ones)?

We didn't want phone menu systems, or to wait minutes, tens of minutes listening to muzak on hold, or to have to decrypt heavy foreign accents and painful latency on calls, etc either.

Customers will get what companies give them, which will be phrased as 'lower prices'.

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