It’s not just the tech industry and this article is spot on.
Every support call without exception I hear the excuse “due to higher than normal/expected call volume your wait time….”
Customers don't want chat bots
71–80 of 473 posts
Re: Customers don't want chat bots
#72As 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 thing is, I wouldn't be asking for support if I was able to find a fix for my issue in the first place. ChatBots are unable to fix the initial problem because the system used to fix said issue doesn't already exist in the account tools. Human intervention is required to fix the problem, so therefore chatbots are completely useless in this context.
Re: Customers don't want chat bots
#73Honestly 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 kno…
Problem is that there are so many questions companies (and government) do not want to give answers to, or they want it split per market, or geographically, or only to citizens, or only to their own employees.
Online you find a lot of information you're just not going to find in chatbots.
This is why Google had such extreme value. Organizations, certainly governments, generally had search functionality, but it was purposefully sabotaged according to each organisation's capricious needs and therefore sucked. The problem is that the information available and searchable was definitely NOT accidentally sabotaged, they actively want to prevent people finding out.
Chatbots are going to suck like company search fields suck. Not because the technology behind them sucks, but because their purpose is to change what you want, not give you what you want. And when this fails, and fails, and fails some more it becomes and endless horror of frustration.
For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36624294
This is what companies want. They want to use frustration and sabotage as a way to get what they want. Chatbots will rarely be anything but a new weapon to do so.
Re: Customers don't want chat bots
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
A good chatbot could probably address it just as well as a human going through the motions trying to achieve target.
Re: Customers don't want chat bots
#75I think the author overestimates the technical level of most requests fielded by call centre agents. They also underestimate the potential a well-designed chatbot could have given recent technology developments.
Speaking with colleagues in private banking call centres (wealthy clients who you'd assume are more clued up). Many calls are basically comfort calls, holding their hand while they login into the bank account, they complete all the steps themselves with no input other than reassuring comments like "yes". Some probably see it as making sure the bank is liable if they "break something".
Re: Customers don't want chat bots
#76The reason why LLMs are truly revolutionary is that they suddenly allow to connect and interface systems that used to require a human in the loop because of their ambiguous interfaces. LLMs can (and will) do a lot more than providing chatbot-like interfaces. Instead, they will power agents that can manipulate a variety of tools and interface with extremely diverse systems, including end users, SMEs, etc.
No they won't.
You're right that LLMs can do this. Well, I guess you might be wrong about that too, but it doesn't matter. That's not the problem. Companies have very large callcenters with actual humans that can do this ... but they don't. They're not allowed to. The only thing callcenters are these days are a semi-human interface to a bad website. LLMs won't be anything more.
Re: Customers don't want chat bots
#77> 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
Frankly, such situations are pretty crap even with a human. Support systems are not set up to handle the high effort corner cases and usually you have to go through a couple rounds of escalation.
Re: Customers don't want chat bots
#78There must be a usecase here, allowing telephony and chatbot to filter unknown numbers.
My regular contacts? Straight to human.
An unknown number? Suspicious chatbot verifying who they are.
Re: Customers don't want chat bots
#79Earlier 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!
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.
Some forms were replaced with bots. For me is the "Request invoice from vendor". I used to have a canned email I would copy paste into their contact form but now I have to answer a few questions the bot does so it is three or four copy/pastes instead of one. Just an annoyance but still, not progress.
Re: Customers don't want chat bots
#80Yeah, Facebook removed their CS. So when my FB account was compromised and they blocked the trusted contacts recovery method (I was told I was trying too often, the first time I tried it and so it went for months. Guess they had a bot to basically dos the trusted contacts system for stolen accounts), there was nobody who could help me.
There just wasn't anyone I could contact. I searched for days. I filled out and submitted multiple large support forms, none of which I ever received an answer to. Eventually I contacted a local Norwegian organization named Slett Meg (Delete me) and asked them to either get my account back or have it deleted. They had it back to me in like two days.