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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

#141

Post by foresto »

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 I'm contacting a company for help from a human, it's because I haven't found the solution in the manual, the out of box experience, tutorial documents, FAQ pages, and so on and so forth. More often than not, I'm calling to do the company the favor of reporting an unaddressed failure mode in their service, often with technical details that would help them quickly identify and fix the cause (and reduce their support call volume)... if only that information could be delivered to the right people.

I don't have infinite time or patience, though. When blocked by a moat of hold times, chat bots, first level support scripts, etc, I will give up.

Yes, calls like mine are in the minority. But they are especially valuable, and I think well worth their share of the costs you describe.

Maybe companies should be identifying customers with above average tech skills, and routing them to better support channels next time they call.

Maybe we need shibboleet.

I don't know what the best solution is, but there must be a better way to do triage than funneling everyone into a flowchart of counterproductive misery, as is widespread today.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#142

Post by RayVR »

adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #133

I agree in principle, but, for me, it all comes down to execution. I used a product that implemented a VERY good AI chatbot as part of their email support and it was better than human support. It was nearly instant in its response time and answered all of my questions perfectly. In fact, it wasn't until after the interaction that I realized it was an AI bot! Pretty good IMO and I'd prefer that interaction over holdin…

Did you read the article? Author is talking about humans relying on chatbots to formulate all their responses for them without strict direction and refinement.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#143

Post by ericd »

anonymous_sorry wrote: post #81
ericd wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I have, Amazon has an excellent one. I had a few exchanges with it, and it initiated a refund for me, it was much quicker than a normal customer service call. Outside of customer service, I'm working on a website that has a huge amount of complexity to it, and would require a much larger interface than normal people would have patience for. So instead, those complex facets are exposed to an LLM as tools it…

I did think about this use-case as I was typing my first message. I can see it working for complex products, for functionality I only want to use once in a blue moon. If it's something I'm doing regularly, I'd rather the LLM just tell me which submenu to find it in, or what command to type.

Yeah true, might be a good idea to have the full UI and then just have the agent slowly “drive” it for the user, so they can follow along and learn, for when they want to move faster than dealing with a chatbot. Though I think speech to text improves chatbot use speed significantly.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#145

Post by motbus3 »

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…

Ir is just imagination to not consider the legal trouble od not providing proper support or even worse, improper support

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#146

Post by dylan604 »

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…

One company whose software I used had an annual support contract. If you did not renew that contract, every time you called support they would ask for a credit card number. If you found an actual bug, the card would not be charged. If it was a user error, the card would get charged.

This seemed pretty reasonable to me.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#147

Post by shimman »

kanzure wrote: post #102
lurk2 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the thing that drives me crazy. Most of these phone calls should just be emails; I can usually stand to wait a week or two for the company to get back to me. General support funnels like support@example.com have been dead for most consumer-facing technologies for close to a decade at this point. I’m not installing an app for every company I’m forced to interact with when there are already existing, universal…

It would be nice if more businesses embraced email instead of requiring phone calls for basic tasks. Imagine how much more productive we could be if we could just send off a quick email with the information and questions. Instead, what we're likely going to get are "voice agents" calling each other when we could have just used email instead...

Businesses likely don't know a better way because the person selling them software doesn't want them to use an open and federated technology. They want the business to use Slack, with a SalesForce CRM, and then add a JIRA workflow to top it off.

Most of the time it's simply not being aware of what's out there or just showing them a different work flow.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#148

Post by dylan604 »

foresto wrote: post #141
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 I'm contacting a company for help from a human, it's because I haven't found the solution in the manual, the out of box experience, tutorial documents, FAQ pages, and so on and so forth. More often than not, I'm calling to do the company the favor of reporting an unaddressed failure mode in their service, often with technical details that would help them quickly identify and fix the cause (and reduce their support…

> If I'm contacting a company for help from a human, it's because I haven't found the solution in the manual, the out of box experience, tutorial documents, FAQ pages, and so on and so forth.

You'd be amazed at how not normal that is though. The number of people willing to throw up their hands to ask for help rather than researching anything is pretty damn high.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#149

Post by andrew_lettuce »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #95
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…

> 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…

The thing is a YOU don't get to decide this. Maybe the PW reset flow is significantly more complex for some people who don't have an actual human walk them though it; maybe Xfinity routers shouldn't need to be power cycled to fix problems. Maybe corporations should make their products better to avoid do many support calls or price that into the purchase price. At least let's be honest that the entire exercise is an attempt to externalize costs on their customers.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#150

Post by dylan604 »

motbus3 wrote: post #145
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…

Ir is just imagination to not consider the legal trouble od not providing proper support or even worse, improper support

Where is support legally mandated?
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