My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too
141–150 of 169 posts
Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too
#142I'm not sure why it took so long for people to recognize this. An overwhelming majority of chatbots I've used are utter rubbish and are better served through a regular interface (search, directory listing, etc). Everyone dreads call menus / phone trees - chatbots are largely the same except there are easier & better UX alternatives in an online medium.
I had to call UPS because of a wrong delivery state a few weeks ago. I ended about in their automated phone system where you don‘t anymore press numbers but rather say what you would like. There‘s never an option to talk to a human. I ended up googling and found out a secret keyword to talk to an agent who one can directly say after choosing a language. I never have been connected faster to a human when calling a lar…
Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too
#143My favorite chatbot experience lately has been support directing me to the chatbot, which then informs me that I am capable of resolving the issue of cancelling/refunding or making changes to my transaction. It just happens to be the case, that I ordered the wrong thing. Simple as that. As I travel to the appropriate link, there is none such ability or option. I relay the appropriate message to their customer service…
Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too
#144I absolutely despise those pop-up "Can I help you" boxes on product websites (usually Intercom). It completely disrupts my flow as a reader in trying to understand the product. That attention disruption got so bad I blocked Intercom and their ilk via injected CSS rules. I really want to take it a step further and write a plug in to interface a chat bot with the human on the other end and waste their time so sites beg…
Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too
#145I am an engineer at a profitable chatbot company (HelloTars). I can't entirely agree with the points mentioned in this article. Yes, a chatbot is not ready to replace human support. However, there are other areas where they show good results. We have been helping customers with lead generation chatbots for the last four years. What we have learnt is customers would instead engage with a chatbot than filling up length…
> To summarize, no chatbots are not dead. They are only beginning. Yes, there will likely be more chatbots in the future. And yes, THEN they will be usable. But no, it's not a good user experience yet. If a website needs a chatbot they: - Didn't put enough effort in organizing the website - Don't want to spend money on real support - Hate their customers
Nothing wrong with this. You can say this about practically any company using software for anything. Not spending money on people is the point of enterprise software.
Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, I just block cookies from ALL sites except the few that I need to log into. GDPR is mostly irrelevant to me for that reason. The unfortunate result is that the goddamn GDPR warnings keep popping up, because ironically, the way those websites remember that you either "accepted" or "denied" the tracking request is to leave a cookie, and I don't allow or want to allow that cookie. EDIT: Separately, there are many we…
>No, I just block cookies from ALL sites except the few that I need to log into. GDPR is mostly irrelevant to me for that reason. GDPR is about a lot more than just cookies. >By blocking the modal dialog boxes, I never actually "accepted", and therefore they never got my permission to track. Ha! Unfortunately they probably treat this as if you accepted the modal (which is against GDPR).
Sure, but they can't track me anyway :)
Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the ChatBot squashes all those different pages and forms into one location. It takes the time and mental load of trying to locate features on the site or app off of me. Instead of navigating through 3 links to reach the form, having to search the newly loaded page each time, I answer 3 questions. In truth, I just type “ATM withdrawal limit” and the form begins, because it’s so obvious what I’m trying to do.
Once you’ve got something down to muscle memory it really doesn’t matter how it works so long as it stays the same, I guess. I feel like these things are a speed bump when I run into them though. I recently canceled a my service with a utility. Instead of a simple form to select a date to shut off service, provide a new mailing address, and a submit button, I had to go through this artificial “dialog” with a robot. W…
The point is to eliminate the need to work to find stuff.
Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except the salesman turns out to be a bot with the IQ of a three year old.
Kind of like this? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p083mv25
For a next version of this sketch they could borrow some inspiration here: https://darkpatterns.org/
Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only ones I really despise are the ones that pop open as soon as you open the page - I haven't even read the damned page title yet, so no , I would not like to ask any questions or tell you anything about my requirements! Just.. go away! Actually, the ones I really despise with a burning passion are the ones like above, but which follow you around the whole site like some kind of demented Clippy 2.0 - you close t…
Yep, It's not just Clippy, it's anything that I would want to dismiss and then it doesn't persist. https://coworker.com has this annoying banner at the moment advertising their global pass. Nice X to close. I refresh page and it's back. If I clear my cookies or my adblock causes a javascript error, then fair enough. Otherwise, persist my decisions please.
#hello_banner { display:none !important; }
.grecaptcha-badge { display: none !important; }
I know it's a lot of work to inspect the DOM and do this for every site but I just hate banners and popups that much, and very often multiple websites reuse the same banner code so my efforts start paying off after dealing with a few dozen.Re: My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
NoScript goes a long way to making the web usable again. Most of these crappy applets are embedded from 3rd party domains, so you can whitelist the primary domain and still block this junk. It's a bit of a pain, yes, but I can't imagine browsing without it.
UMatrix works good for this flow too