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Customers don't want chat bots

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Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#461

Post by missedthecue »

IshKebab wrote: post #242
missedthecue wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I work in customer service for tech company, I see the tickets and about 60% of them can be solved with a chatbot. Most of the time the instructions were already written on the customers screen and they just didn't bother to read them. I agree, calling up and getting a bot is irritating, but personally fielding every call without screening out the silly PEBCAC tickets gets expensive quick and hold-times pay the pr…

> and they just didn't bother to read them I would encourage you to reconsider this sentiment, and to read "The Design of Everyday Things". Sometimes you really do have a situation where the user needs to read and they just don't. But that's less common than them "not reading" because: * The relevant information is buried in what appears to be bumph that we all sensibly skip over. * The instructions are actually not…

One example is when a user tries to upload a file to the system that is not allowed (permitted files are plainly listed), a large red error message appears that says "This file type is not allowed. Please upload one of the following:"

You would not believe the amount of tickets we get daily where people are confused as to why their file wasn't uploaded.

Automated bots clear a lot of this stuff up.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#462

Post by IshKebab »

missedthecue wrote: post #461
IshKebab wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and they just didn't bother to read them I would encourage you to reconsider this sentiment, and to read "The Design of Everyday Things". Sometimes you really do have a situation where the user needs to read and they just don't. But that's less common than them "not reading" because: * The relevant information is buried in what appears to be bumph that we all sensibly skip over. * The instructions are actually not…

One example is when a user tries to upload a file to the system that is not allowed (permitted files are plainly listed), a large red error message appears that says "This file type is not allowed. Please upload one of the following:" You would not believe the amount of tickets we get daily where people are confused as to why their file wasn't uploaded. Automated bots clear a lot of this stuff up.

I think the issue there is that you're assuming all users are familiar with what "file types" are. It could also be that the format they are uploading is entirely reasonable so it should work. A better solution is surely to convert the file for them. That's what you're making them do themselves right?

I've ran into a similar situation lots of times when uploading photos on mobile. Often you get "this file is too large". Well no shit, we have the technology to automatically resize it now! It's not difficult! (Also have you noticed how Android lacks that basic functionality?)

Yes it is more work than not doing it, but it's definitely less work than implementing an AI chat bot.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#463

Post by asimpleusecase »

elcritch wrote: post #239
RamenJunkie_ wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I think this is the point. Like lately out cell service has been horrible at the house and my wife keeps asking me to call them but why? It's just going to be screaming into the void of some automated system and nothing will be done.

Call to cancel your account, mention moving to another service, etc. Often times companies will transfer you to more empowered "retention specialists".

Recently, I noticed my broadband fees were double what the company would charge a new customer at the same address. I reached out to the telecom and stated with the “I’d like to close my service” track. That got me a human but when it was clear that my issue was price they had a script for that. It was full of delays and circular “offers”. After a hour it finally end with their final offer - split the difference between what I am paying and the new customer price. What is amazing to me is that another competitor offers the same new customer price they do and it all uses the same infrastructure. It is literally a terminal entry switching process. Apparently they have calculated they can keep more a actually lose very few customers.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#464

Post by fragmede »

seanhunter wrote: post #234
fragmede wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no interconnection of any kind between any system that knows about city A and B and the systems which know about city C The AGI, via DuplexAI, could just call up the office in city C and ask. It's been calling restaurants to get their hours for years. Having it call a listed phone number to ask a person about an account doesn't seem far fetched at all to me.

The person at the original call center literally had no idea of the existence of the operation of the company at city C and it didn't have any sort of online presence. The online presence only knew about the operations at city A and B. Remember that C was the zombie part of a defunct company they bought so even the original contact details which might once have existed wouldn't work or be listed any more. The call ce…

fair point. or otherwise is as much as I was getting at. mail scanning services and text to speech gateways extend the reach of a hypothetical AGI. we don't need to wait for ARA (artificial robot actuation) for the skynetpocalypse to come. plenty of building blocks are already here.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#465

Post by fragmede »

staticman2 wrote: post #238
fragmede wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why? I'm not making the same logical connections as you are.

Contextually the topic is "customer support chat bots". Openai's Chatgpt service isn't that sort of chat bot.

thanks. my intuition is that the demand is, actually, there - customers don't want to read through an faq and a knowledge base. they want to go "I , can you fix it?". whether that's to a human intelligence or artificial is besides the point, they want someone who's able to understand it first, empowered to fix it, second. where a bot can only regurgigate the docs, psh.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#466

Post by fakedang »

xur17 wrote: post #215
ye-olde-sysrq wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is my take too. Chat bots are usually transparently obviously something the CTO bought, then Support dumped some basic configuration into it, and now it's a glorified redirect-provider to poorly map english questions to help articles. There's 0 vertical integration and it's purely to try to shunt traffic down cheaper support channels. I've literally had 1 good experience with bot-based support. Exactly one.…

I agree. In my head I group chatbots into: 1. bot that can regurgitate the faqs 2. bot that can perform actions I've had good experiences with type 2 bots with Amazon, Uber, and Doordash, refunding orders that weren't delivered, etc. I assume they have a budget for refunds based on your purchase and refund volume, very similar to the agency a normal customer service agent would have.

> very similar to the agency a normal customer service agent would have.

Exactly this is the differentiating factor. Even if you have a human on the other side, if they don't have the agency accorded to them to perform a particular action within given bounds, they are no good compared to a Chatbot. A chatbot will help such companies cut costs, but they'll also reduce the CX - but I doubt those companies give a damn about that.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#467

Post by [deleted] »

mschuster91 wrote: post #241
dpifke wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CFPB is completely useless. I've never received a worthwhile response to any complaint I submitted through them, out of the ten or so complaints I've submitted to them in the last ~decade. They simply forward your complaint to the same barely-literate customer "service" department that created the problem in the first place, so that someone who doesn't understand the problem can cut-and-paste their original respo…

> I also once tried cutting-and-pasting several paragraphs of hard-core gay erotic Star Trek fan-fiction Ballsy move

[deleted]

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#468

Post by bshacklett »

rationalist wrote: post #153
JAlexoid wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't say I had a bad experience with my Amazon interactions. I have 3 free UPS's, that were wrong and Amazon just refunded me without requesting a return. And I even had a hard drive go back, because of degraded performance - but it did require some extra troubleshooting on the phone. Granted, I live in a rural area and I spend a lot on Amazon with Prime - from cleaning supplies and food to furniture and tech.

> UPS's, that were wrong and Amazon just refunded me without requesting a return. That's because they contain batteries that Amazon will not accept.

Magnets are the same. I ended up with an extra subwoofer that way once.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#469

Post by summerdown2 »

jodrellblank wrote: post #65
summerdown2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I have heard good things about their customer service. But I put in my postcode to their site and the response was:

> For your location, forecast download sync speed is 27-37Mb/s and forecast upload sync speed is 4.2-6.9Mb/s.

I’m currently on ten times that and was considering going higher next time. Unfortunately that’s not currently competitive with Virgin.

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