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Customers don't want chat bots

creativegood.com

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Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#51

Post by TulliusCicero »

carlosrdrz wrote: post #26

> 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 question…

Yeah, the author is assuming that the general populace is like themselves (and like most HN commenters, I suspect): fairly high degree of technical competence, able to find workarounds for most issues in an app or website or forum somewhere.

But most people aren't like that.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#52

Post by skywhopper »

auggierose wrote: post #41
mduggles wrote: post #32

Typically chatbots that I interact with are just attempting to steer me back towards FAQs. I don’t need a different interface to search your documentation in an attempt to keep me on the cheap customer service path and away from the expensive customer service path. Which isn’t to say they can’t be helpful. I’d much rather chat with a bot than call a person, if the bot is capable of doing the things I need. The thing…

I recently had a chat with the Amazon bot for a refund of something that had not been delivered. That went very well!

It’s always been possible to get refunds from Amazon without contacting a human, through a very simple form. I haven’t used their chatbot, but I’m curious how it’s better than the old form.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#53

Post by dontworryabout »

benj111 wrote: post #40
mduggles wrote: post #32

Typically chatbots that I interact with are just attempting to steer me back towards FAQs. I don’t need a different interface to search your documentation in an attempt to keep me on the cheap customer service path and away from the expensive customer service path. Which isn’t to say they can’t be helpful. I’d much rather chat with a bot than call a person, if the bot is capable of doing the things I need. The thing…

I had a savings account where the interface was basically a chat bot. It was basically guess the verb. And also not obvious when you're talking to a human through the exact same interface. It's a menu system but harder to use.

Wow! “Guess the verb.” That is exactly how text based adventure games worked in 80s. The interface of the future is Zork.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#54

Post by ozim »

smeej wrote: post #37
seagullriffic wrote: post #25

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 .

Please just understand you are part of the The overwhelming majority of people are calling in about something in the FAQ because they can't be arsed to do their own search. The first layer of support at larger companies is usually restricted by their software from sending you anything but a pre-written response, just because you're such a rarity.

To add to that ...

I want to call a human even if my question seems dumb for them and have it taken care of, because I don't even know if I get that one answer there might be 10 other questions hiding behind the corner.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#55

Post by AlexandrB »

sgt101 wrote: post #48
auggierose wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently had a chat with the Amazon bot for a refund of something that had not been delivered. That went very well!

I had the same, it refunded me, then 3 weeks later I got a notification from Amazon that they would be taking the money off me. I complained and was ignored. It was only $10 but it teaches a lesson.

The stuff Amazon gets away with is incredible. Imagine if you returned a product to WalMart and they decided to charge you for it anyways 3 weeks later.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#56

Post by ithkuil »

sgt101 wrote: post #48
auggierose wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently had a chat with the Amazon bot for a refund of something that had not been delivered. That went very well!

I had the same, it refunded me, then 3 weeks later I got a notification from Amazon that they would be taking the money off me. I complained and was ignored. It was only $10 but it teaches a lesson.

I'm very surprised. My experience with Amazon refunds and in general customer support is that they care more about upsetting a customer than fighting for pesky 10 bucks.

Could it be that their behaviour is different depending on who is the customer, i.e. what is the customers yearly spend?

I shop frequently on Amazon. Last year I sent a gift to my nephew how was living in a dorm at the University. The gift was a comouter monitor about $500 worth. The package disappeared soon after it got signed by someone that was at the front desk and never made it to my nephew.

I was already getting ready for a long discussion but Amazon said they will handle it and my nephew got another monitor two days after.

I also routinely return stuff I buy by mistake and I honestly report I just bought it by mistake

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#57

Post by sgt101 »

orjandus wrote: post #11

Honestly, I've heard that for a regular user chat bots are amazing. Tech people are just bunch of nerds who are used to going through documentation. For a regular grandma it's so much easiser to just write like she's used to.

I would qualify this.

There is a distribution of users. Definitely some users are better off (no matter how good the chatbot is) using the FAQ or websites. Some people are not chat interface orientated.

Some people would benefit from a very powerful and effective chatbot. The grandmother you cite for example! But the problem is that almost all chatbots are incompetent and really function to:

1) deflect users

2) bolster the innovation credentials of the organization or sponsors for the project.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#58

Post by jeroenhd »

carlosrdrz wrote: post #26

> 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 question…

When I use these chatbots or contact customer support, it's probably because I need a very basic and simple thing done.

Not because I don't want to do it myself. Because the website I'm using is throwing error messages, the form to do it myself has disappeared five years ago, and the only way to accomplish what I want is to bother someone over the phone.

When I worked customer service, I'm sure customers could've done most of the things they wanted to do themselves, if the website wasn't unclear, the help articles weren't incomplete and outdated, the manuals were up to date and the necessary buttons were accessible to the end user.

Companies sabotage themselves with shitty business practices so their cheap support lines get overwhelmed. Almost everything I've wanted to get done through a chatbot should've been an HTML form in my account panel, but businesses don't want to make it easy to return things or ask for refunds. They want you to jump through as many hoops and redirections as possible, because that makes them money.

With the way ChatGPT just lies and deceives out of the box, I've started taking screenshots of chatbot conversations. These businesses are making these chatbots their official point of contact so I take everything these bots promise to do or claim to have done as an official statement from their support department.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#59

Post by omgmajk »

Honestly most customers do not read anything on the website before they contact support and in these cases a chatbot, given that it is trained well is probably the best solution. I personally despise them because I don't want to interact with anyone if I can solve a problem myself so when I actually have a problem it's usually just in the way of getting an answer.

But having worked technical support in the past I know that most customers don't do any sort of research at all and will (not happily exactly, but yeah) sit through two hours of phone que to ask the most basic of questions that is in the manual, on the website or anywhere on the internet really.

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