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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

#121

Post by wtallis »

chimeracoder wrote: post #112
redox99 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Giving the device enough RAM to survive memory leaks during heavy usage would also be a valid option, as is automatic rebooting to get the device back into a clean state before the user experiences a persistent loss of connectivity. There are a wealth of available workarounds when you control everything about the device's hardware and software and almost everything about the network environments it'll be operating in. Fixing all the tricky, subtle software bugs is not necessary.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#122

Post by WD-42 »

Ajakks wrote: post #106
WD-42 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you enjoy reading slop? I fail to see how this is a controversial take.

You act as if the internet was like a high society book club - all the previous articles were written by ivy league grads. I recall geocities, angelfire, all the chans. The internet has always been a cesspool with little islands of quality floating in a proverbial sewage of human output. In theory AI slop will improve. A racist, sexist, ignorant online community of humans 20 years ago, if it is still active, is almos…

So your straw man is that the internet already had bad stuff on it? Cmon, you can do better. Adding more bad to bad is still bad.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#123

Post by causal »

I have found that chatbots embedded in some spaces can be useful, e.g. docs. Stagehand for example embeds a little query form at the bottom of their docs page, and I've found the chatbot it engages can quickly direct me to the documentation I'm looking for: https://docs.stagehand.dev/v3/first-steps/introduction

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#124

Post by radiorental »

dmd wrote: post #114
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.

You might be talking to a chatbot!!

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#125

Post by meatmanek »

zahlman wrote: post #70
metalliqaz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't. I really do not care what the LLM has to say. If a person has taken the (substantial) time necessary to fill the context with enough information that something interesting comes out, I would much rather they simply give me the inputs. The middleman is just digested Internet text. I've already got one of those on my end.

Related: https://blog.gpkb.org/posts/just-send-me-the-prompt/ (I could have sworn there was a popular HN submission a while back of this or a similar blog post, but damned if I can find it now.)

You're probably thinking of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43888803

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#126

Post by geauxvirtual »

The only Chatbot I've semi-enjoyed interacting with was SiriusXM during my latest yearly try to cancel dance they make you go through. Usually this was a 45 minute to an hour phone call with Customer Support to eventually get a cheaper rate and continue service.

This last time, it sent me to a Chatbot. In five minutes, I got a cheaper rate than I was previously paying. I'm sort of looking forward to the next interaction to see if I can get even cheaper rates or finally cancel the service.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#127

Post by devilbunny »

xmprt wrote: post #107
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.

> "help" is always framed as my needing to be educated For many users, this is often the case, and front line AI support like this can handle that pretty effectively while giving your case faster live support. Would you rather sit behind 4 people in the queue trying to figure out why their device doesn't work without batteries when it's not plugged in or have them deal with AI to solve the problem while you get your…

I wouldn't mind, if it ended up getting me a human at the end of the process.

It's not quite at the level of the "shibboleet" XKCD, but I did once manage to get a much higher support tier at Comcast who was able to verify that 1) I had a problem that was their fault and 2) fix it. Even that guy was halfway on a script. Y'know, after I've read you a ping timeout three times from the Windows command line, I probably shouldn't have to read it verbatim to you again. It hasn't changed.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#128

Post by alexpotato »

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…

> Because workers tend not to stay long, you pay for a lot of training.

I often wonder that if you paid $60K for a top quality support person instead of $30K for two average people (or even $20K for 3 bad people) then the following might happen:

- you would get better support calls

- happier customers

- longer tenured employees

- all of the above would lead to a reputation as a company with AMAZING support

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#129

Post by appreciatorBus »

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.

The article wasn't about this at all. It wasn't about customers, about AI customer service, or about seeking help.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#130

Post by appreciatorBus »

lemoncookiechip wrote: post #91

I don't care if it's a human, a chatbot, or a dog if they fix my problem. I don't want to contact customer support in the first place, if I'm forced to, it's because something is very wrong and in that case I don't want to be listening to elevator music and "your call is important to us, please hold" for an hour, and get my call disconnected forcing me to call again. Issue is that I've yet to have a chatbot actually…

The article wasn't about customer support chat bots at all.
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