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Customers don't want chat bots

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Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#91

Post by LeafItAlone »

nfriedly wrote: post #81
seanhunter wrote: post #69

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 compan…

You have my condolences. My brother and I ended up hiring a lawyer to handle our dad's estate, and I'd recommend it to anyone. She did things like send the hospital a letter that said in essence "give me a single bill with a total for all services provided at your hospital. If it's not on this bill I'm not going to pay it." (Although legal fees for estates are capped here in Ohio, not sure if that's true where you ar…

> She did things like send the hospital a letter that said in essence "give me a single bill with a total for all services provided at your hospital. If it's not on this bill I'm not going to pay it."

That is a great thing to say, but does it actually hold any weight? Or is it like the construction trucks that have signs saying they are not responsible for damage from items blown off them?

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#92

Post by dgb23 »

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.

That's orthogonal to whether you use a simple form or not. Filtering out false leads is a hard problem though.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#93

Post by jafo1989 »

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.

Infocom had a 80s text adventure game called Bureaucracy[1] that captures this modern scenario exactly.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy_(video_game)

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#94

Post by fnordpiglet »

Chat bots built as Eliza clones are worse than useless. However a more concise ChatGPT hooked up to APIs to achieve customer service goals would be great. It operates in an abstract abductive semantic space that’s considerably more deep than most first level support can, especially those poor souls working from a different country with a different native language. I would assume most if not all companies would maintain second level and third level human support for the truly mindbendingly challenging inquiries, but those are a very small percentage of the total volume. For that 90%+ of the case volume a well contextualized, fine tuned, and vectordb’ed chatbot LLM of at least GPT4 capability is likely going to our perform almost all situations in almost all dimensions, including identifying situations for escalation to next level support.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#95

Post by sidewndr46 »

LeafItAlone wrote: post #91
nfriedly wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have my condolences. My brother and I ended up hiring a lawyer to handle our dad's estate, and I'd recommend it to anyone. She did things like send the hospital a letter that said in essence "give me a single bill with a total for all services provided at your hospital. If it's not on this bill I'm not going to pay it." (Although legal fees for estates are capped here in Ohio, not sure if that's true where you ar…

> She did things like send the hospital a letter that said in essence "give me a single bill with a total for all services provided at your hospital. If it's not on this bill I'm not going to pay it." That is a great thing to say, but does it actually hold any weight? Or is it like the construction trucks that have signs saying they are not responsible for damage from items blown off them?

The billing department can call your bluff, then get in line in probate court to get paid. Possibly years down the road depending on how long it takes. Keep in mind hospital bills are just a fantasy, I've received bills >$50,000 US for less than 1 hour in the hospital.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#96

Post by chucksta »

LeafItAlone wrote: post #91
nfriedly wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have my condolences. My brother and I ended up hiring a lawyer to handle our dad's estate, and I'd recommend it to anyone. She did things like send the hospital a letter that said in essence "give me a single bill with a total for all services provided at your hospital. If it's not on this bill I'm not going to pay it." (Although legal fees for estates are capped here in Ohio, not sure if that's true where you ar…

> She did things like send the hospital a letter that said in essence "give me a single bill with a total for all services provided at your hospital. If it's not on this bill I'm not going to pay it." That is a great thing to say, but does it actually hold any weight? Or is it like the construction trucks that have signs saying they are not responsible for damage from items blown off them?

Not really, same idea. Hospitals want to recover as much as they can with as little headache. Coming from a lawyer vs trying to negotiate yourself just means "I can actually make this difficult for you, play ball"

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#97

Post by dopidopHN »

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…

That the key point for me. If the chatbot can’t act on the system for me beside « get me human », it’s useless.

I like them when : - it can schedule a call back with a human - it can open ticket, ask for document on my side and make it faster for my query to process overall.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#98

Post by [deleted] »

JAlexoid wrote: post #86
NikolaNovak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You should try talking to people who work in customer service call centers, most of their calls are arrogant opportunists that aren't calling to fix any issues... but to get something extra. "This item is scratched, so I want a 50% discount refunded" - comes to my mind. Most of customer service is dealing with Karens

[deleted]

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#99

Post by JshWright »

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…

> The thing is nobody seems willing to let the system actually do anything except escalate to a person, so why bother?

Because you are not the target user for the bot. For every user that proactively reads the FAQs, there's 10 more that don't and would happily open a support ticket to have someone copy/paste the FAQ answer to them. The bot is to there deflect those cases.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#100

Post by jonfw »

chatbots are the future of customer service.

The past of customer service is the complex phone system where you select a number from a menu, and they automate some tasks (like paying your bill, etc.) and sometimes you end up talking to an agent.

But the youngest generations hate talking on the phone and audio is a terrible medium for a menu. A chatbot can provide similar functionality, but you've got the ability to provide a much richer interface, and when you end up with an agent, they'll chat instead of talk on the phone.

As chatbots get better and better at performing actions, you'll have to talk to fewer agents, and waiting on hold will hopefully be a thing of the past

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