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Don't make me talk to your chatbot

raymyers.org

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Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#111

Post by protocolture »

Quothling wrote: post #48
com2kid wrote: post #13

People demand free support. When I worked at Microsoft, it cost over $20 to have a human customer support agent pick up the phone when someone called in for help. That was greater than our product margin. Every time someone called for help, we basically lost the entire profit on that sale, and then some. Most common support calls where for things that were explained in the manual, the out of box experience, tutorial…

Isn't part of why Apple's iPhone can be so expensive is because it's very easy to get actual human support for it when something goes wrong? You probably didn't make the mistake at Microsoft, but I've seen people look at the localized spreadsheet and miss the long term company wide spreadsheet completely. Often because the sales and support departments are so far from each other that they're basically two different c…

>Isn't part of why Apple's iPhone can be so expensive is because it's very easy to get actual human support for it when something goes wrong?

Yeah, Apple has best in class support. They tried monetising it through Applecare but thats largely broken down.

I cant stand Apple for a lot of reasons, but their phone support, and everything behind that like training, is about as good as you can possibly hope to achieve.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#112

Post by chimeracoder »

redox99 wrote: post #104
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most common support calls where for things that were explained in the manual, the out of box experience, tutorial documents, FAQ pages, and so on and so forth. My brother used to work at tech support for XBox Live. He said that 80% of his calls were for password resets, something users can easily self-service. There's literally an option on the login form for "Forgot Password", and people would rather spend time ca…

Power cycling is not a solution. It's a crappy workaround, and you still had downtime because of it. The device should never get stuck in the first place, and the solution for that is fixing whatever bug is in the firmware. If they want to reduce support calls, then have more reliable gear.

> Power cycling is not a solution. It's a crappy workaround, and you still had downtime because of it. The device should never get stuck in the first place, and the solution for that is fixing whatever bug is in the firmware.

I'm sympathetic to the argument that companies should make support calls less necessary by providing better products and services, but "just write bug-free software" is not a solution.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#114

Post by dmd »

com2kid wrote: post #13

People demand free support. When I worked at Microsoft, it cost over $20 to have a human customer support agent pick up the phone when someone called in for help. That was greater than our product margin. Every time someone called for help, we basically lost the entire profit on that sale, and then some. Most common support calls where for things that were explained in the manual, the out of box experience, tutorial…

You wrote all of that in response to the title, without reading even one paragraph of the article? Wild. The article is not about support chatbots.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#115

Post by Blackthorn »

bsder wrote: post #74
autoexec wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is a company that has very little right to complain about support costs. They'd save themselves a fortune if they stopped releasing bad software and updates that required support in the first place. Nobody wants to call Microsoft for support. They do it because they've been forced to, usually by Microsoft. This kind of support can hardly be called "free" because even when Microsoft isn't charging customers…

> They'd save themselves a fortune if they stopped releasing bad software I doubt it. I suspect the number one tech support call is "I forgot my password" and everything else is a long way below that. I'll slag on Microslop all day, but users are dumber than dumb.

Very easy solution to users forgetting their passwords. It's to not need a password for your software. Something that once upon a time, Microsoft did not require with their operating systems.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#116

Post by dmd »

hidelooktropic wrote: post #52

It matters less to me that the helper is an AI/human than the kind of help I'm getting. The bigger problem to me is "help" is always framed as my needing to be educated, not a problem with the service. This is especially prevalent for technical customers who are legitimately trying to draw attention to a bug in the platform only to get how-to help articles pasted back to them.

Yet another person who responded to the title without clicking through to the article, which has nothing to do with support chatbots.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#117

Post by zikani_03 »

davis wrote: post #99
ifokiedoke wrote: post #42

Reading almost all the comments gives me the sad validation that people truly do not read the article before commenting... This article is not about support chatbots. It's about clearing up your writing/thoughts and communicating clearly even if you used a chatbot to get there.

I can't believe I had to scroll this long to see this comment. Like what the heck is wrong with people on this site. I thought I clicked the wrong comment section.

I also thought the same thing. Had to double take and scroll to see I'm not alone. It's an interesting phenomenon, I suspect the title was too on the nose that it invokes an immediate reaction.

Anyways, I wish more people commented on what's actually in the article - i've observed what OP is complaining about happening in whatsapp groups too esp when there is a difference of opinion; people defer to calling Meta's in-chat AI instead of giving a bit more effort and stating _their_ view.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#118

Post by jfreds »

AI pull request descriptions are my current pet peeve. The ones I have seen are verbose and filled with meaningless fluff words (“optimized”, “performant” for what? In terms of what?), they leak details about the CoT that didn’t make it into the final solution (“removed the SQLite implementation” what SQLite implementation? There isn’t one on main…), and are devoid of context about _why_ the work is even being done, what alternatives were considered etc.

My first round of code review has become a back and forth with the original author just asking them questions about their description, before I even bother to look at code. At first I decided I’d just be a stick in the mud and juniors would learn to get it right the first time, but it turns out I’m just burning myself out due to spite instead.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#119

Post by boplicity »

com2kid wrote: post #13

People demand free support. When I worked at Microsoft, it cost over $20 to have a human customer support agent pick up the phone when someone called in for help. That was greater than our product margin. Every time someone called for help, we basically lost the entire profit on that sale, and then some. Most common support calls where for things that were explained in the manual, the out of box experience, tutorial…

If someone pays for a product, and then gets support for it, that's not FREE support. That's paid support. It's not their fault if the company they're a customer of loses money when they support those they've sold a product to.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#120

Post by hidelooktropic »

dmd wrote: post #116
hidelooktropic wrote: post #52

It matters less to me that the helper is an AI/human than the kind of help I'm getting. The bigger problem to me is "help" is always framed as my needing to be educated, not a problem with the service. This is especially prevalent for technical customers who are legitimately trying to draw attention to a bug in the platform only to get how-to help articles pasted back to them.

Yet another person who responded to the title without clicking through to the article, which has nothing to do with support chatbots.

I understand the article is actually not about support chatbots specifically but seeing the conversation here talked about that it's not out of place to join in that discussion. Attempting to shame people by accusing them of not reading is hardly constructive. This isn't Reddit.
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