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Customers don't want chat bots

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Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#141

Post by runesofdoom »

malfist wrote: post #90
JAlexoid wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you wouldn't buy a scratched item in store, why should you have to accept it from an online retailer? I wouldn't call a person wanting their new item to be in new condition a scammer.

I think the idea is that the item isn't scratched. They're just claiming it is to try and get a refund/credit.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#142

Post by JohnFen »

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…

> 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.

Hoenstly? I don't care about the company's problems giving support. If I have a problem, and the company won't resolve it, or if they waste too much of my time forcing me to go through a bot first, then I'm not their customer anymore. There are plenty of other places who actually appreciate my business.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#143

Post by wouldbecouldbe »

gspencley wrote: post #113
wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #46

I dont want useless customer support. Wether that's a human or a bot. It's extremely frustrating to have a real issue, take for instance a plane cancelled or delayed when travelling with kids, and not being able to talk to a real person who can actually help. Let alone having to wait 30-60 minutes to get a hold of someone. Nowadays most large organisations are structured now that it's impossible to have a conversatio…

> Nowadays most large organisations are structured now that it's impossible to have a conversation with a human who actually has the power to make a decision. In my experience it's equally impossible to have a conversation with a human that has a 1st grade level set of communication skills. You write out a detailed account of your problem and then get some copy/paste response back that has nothing to do with your com…

Yeah talking to stripe customer support is like talking to gpt. Have to remind them every now and then to go back and reread the conversation.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#144

Post by ballenf »

chucksta wrote: post #96
LeafItAlone wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"

In the case of a death or bankruptcy, yes it does work. There is a hard cutoff date and if they miss it the debt is uncollectible.

It does not work for the living.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#145

Post by pessimizer »

gspencley wrote: post #113
wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #46

I dont want useless customer support. Wether that's a human or a bot. It's extremely frustrating to have a real issue, take for instance a plane cancelled or delayed when travelling with kids, and not being able to talk to a real person who can actually help. Let alone having to wait 30-60 minutes to get a hold of someone. Nowadays most large organisations are structured now that it's impossible to have a conversatio…

> Nowadays most large organisations are structured now that it's impossible to have a conversation with a human who actually has the power to make a decision. In my experience it's equally impossible to have a conversation with a human that has a 1st grade level set of communication skills. You write out a detailed account of your problem and then get some copy/paste response back that has nothing to do with your com…

It's probably not communication skills but workload. Their daily pay may depend on how many people they knock off, and an impulsive, quick response might work 90% of the time. If you're one of the 10%, they'll finally read what you wrote instead of skimming it quickly, hitting F6, and selecting the third option.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#146

Post by justin66 »

blitzar wrote: post #9
AllegedAlec wrote: post #4

I have never met a chat bot that worked . I try the same question worded 6 different ways, I try asking it to connect me to an actual fucking human being. If it even does I still get stuck in a choice menu at first, which half of the time tells me that I can get help with this via their chat bots and disconnects. Fuck chat bots and the money-saving horse they rode in on.

Amazon. My personal best time for a full refund was slightly under 2 minutes. It may be that having a long standing account, not claiming every delivery has been "lost" and rarely returning products makes me appear unlikely to be the usual customer asking for a refund.

> It may be that having a long standing account, not claiming every delivery has been "lost" and rarely returning products makes me appear unlikely to be the usual customer asking for a refund.

You had a request that was simple enough and common enough the bot's design took it fully into account.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#147

Post by manicennui »

cfn wrote: post #79
skywhopper wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is my experience as well. Almost anything that the chatbots do competently shouldn't require more than a form on their site with a few questions and often did in the past.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#149

Post by crosen99 »

Strong disagree. The way I see it, any successful customer service operation needs to have three things in place:

1. Properly defined and articulated customer service policies and procedures

2. A training program that adequately prepares agents to know, understand and apply those policies and procedures

3. Sufficient inherent capability and disposition of the customer service agents to apply that training

My take is that the (relevant) inherent capabilities of LLMs at even at this early stage are as strong or stronger than what I see in the human customer service agents I typically deal with. And the disposition of an LLM can be arbitrarily good through fine-tuning and prompt engineering.

As such, any company that gets 1. and 2. right has a high chance of providing a better support experience by replacing human agents with LLMs.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#150

Post by tomjen3 »

tetha wrote: post #70
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…

Its not a bad idea, but its like phone trees: abused by so many places the only thing I can do is try to get a human.
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