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Customers don't want chat bots

creativegood.com

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Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#61

Post by jprete »

0x2c8 wrote: post #10

I believe this is a clear example of the Moloch effect [1]. Companies race towards having the shiniest chatbot or _virtual assistant_, without fully understanding all the implications and customer needs. Everyone wants to have their brand name associated with being "the first" or "the best" in their segment for providing such technology, no matter how trivial it may seem -- e.g. as the article points out: just wrappi…

How did [1] write an entire article on this and not reference Scott Alexander’s Meditations on Moloch from 2014? https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#62

Post by blagie »

ithkuil wrote: post #56
sgt101 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 como…

So was I, the first few times this happened.

My experience is that Amazon customer service did a complete 180 in 2020. Prior to that, every issue was resolved to my satisfaction, and they felt too generous, if anything.

Today, every Amazon rep I speak to isn't even empowered to resolve the most basic issues, and sounds like they hold their employer in complete contempt. Which is to say, they follow the scripts and /try/ to sound friendly, but it's clear they hate their employer, and want to satisfice their KPIs to keep their job, but all else being equal, would prefer for Amazon to die.

This also corresponds to a huge increase in problem rates. Prior to 2020, problems with Amazon were rare. Today, it seems like screwups happen all the time. I don't think they show up on any KPIs, though, as from Amazon's perspective, if a customer service rep e.g. satisficied and pretended to issue a refund without actually issuing one, or a customer gave up on resolving an issue, they have no visibility into the issue.

A basic, obvious issue like a missing package or a return will get handled, but anything more complex is now a black hole.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#63

Post by blagie »

mrweasel wrote: post #38
dgb23 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can provide that with a simple HTML form though.

That honestly never crossed my mind, but I think your right. Anything a chat bot could do or approve could simply be accomplished by an HTML form or some type of self service. Chat bots will take over more and more, but only to save money, not to improve the customer experience. I do get that some people call in with the simplest of question or problems, but for the people who call in with actual issues, I doubt that…

If you issue everyone a refund, you won't be very successful in business. I think a GPT-powered chatbot (not an old-school one) could screen between:

- Genuine issues

- Scammers

Probably more effectively than a minimum-wage apathetic human being.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#65

Post by jodrellblank »

summerdown2 wrote: post #33
seeknotfind wrote: post #3

~"because the chatbots aren't good enough" Chat bots are annoying due to potential inconsistency, having to guess the types of things you ask for, due to their latency, but they've made major advancements recently, and we are only beginning to see what's possible. If those companies using chat bots are failing to provide value, then they won't be competitive and they will go away. Why do we want to discourage them fr…

> If those companies using chat bots are failing to provide value, then they won't be competitive and they will go away. The difficulty is, this is obscured to the customer. Let's say I have a broadband account in a country with competitors I can choose between (eg the UK, where I can have BT or Virgin). I've already chosen the best package for me. I'm ringing up after six months of good service to fix my intermitten…

If you want decent support as part of the core offering you can pay a bit more for Andrews and Arnold, their support staff are in the UK, all technically capable rather than KB parrots, and available by IRC. Lower customer contention for their shared bandwidth so it doesn’t slow down at night is another thing worth paying a bit more for. And they have a decently technical control panel web page.

https://www.aa.net.uk/

(Satisfied customer for years).

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#66

Post by seanhunter »

dontworryabout wrote: post #53
benj111 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Omg the number of times I went into a mental meltdown with text adventures over that.

I finally have the thing I need

I am in the right place to use the thing such that it will fix whatever problem so I can move onwards

How hard can it be to figure out how to ask the game to use the thing to fulfil its purpose?

Quite fucking hard, it turns out. Quite fucking hard.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#68

Post by mrweasel »

blagie wrote: post #63
mrweasel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That honestly never crossed my mind, but I think your right. Anything a chat bot could do or approve could simply be accomplished by an HTML form or some type of self service. Chat bots will take over more and more, but only to save money, not to improve the customer experience. I do get that some people call in with the simplest of question or problems, but for the people who call in with actual issues, I doubt that…

If you issue everyone a refund, you won't be very successful in business. I think a GPT-powered chatbot (not an old-school one) could screen between: - Genuine issues - Scammers Probably more effectively than a minimum-wage apathetic human being.

Isn't that the point of "This could be a form". The chatbot would have certain rules that it would need to follow and I don't see why those rules couldn't be translated into a form.

I wouldn't underestimate the mental capacity of scammers, it would only be a matter of time before they would know exactly how to prompt the bot to issue a refund.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#69

Post by seanhunter »

A big part of the problem isn’t actually chat bots even though it may well seem to be.

It’s that you can’t pop some system atop a teetering ziggurat of shitty data from mutually incompatible systems and think the fundamental problems are going to just disappear.

Example: I am currently executor of my dad’s estate and trying to get various policies and pensions and whatnot transferred into my mother’s name. One company seemed especially clueless when I emailed them so I called. Part of the voice prompt on the phone system was something like “if the statement we send you comes from city A, press 1, if it comes from city B press 2”. Well that’s a weird red flag right there also a teeny problem: my statement comes from city C. I eventually speak to a human but try as they might they can’t find anything about my dad.

Eventually I write to the company at city C and they’re super helpful. Basically this company is formed from the corpses of various pension funds which just get welded together. There is no underlying integration at all between the systems. They are separate companies in all but name.

You could have an agi chatbot and its still going to be lobotomised by this level of disfunction. In my experience the data landscape at many enterprises is like this.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#70

Post by tetha »

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 like the vision our chatbot team at work has there. They want their bot to have 2, maybe three tasks. First, it's supposed to be a neater way of presenting that initial phone choice of "Press 1 if you have an internet issue. Press 2 if you have a telephone issue". It's easier for some people to say "My phone is dead and has no free tone when picked up" and have the system recognize this as a phone issue. And second, it's supposed to make the collection of necessary data about the call smoother - since when does the issue occur, which phone number is affected, what's your account number. Once it has those (or it gives up after 1-2 tries without progress) it hands over to an actual agent.

The value proposition there is that you save a few human employee minutes per support case.

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