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Don't make me talk to your chatbot

raymyers.org

151–160 of 221 posts

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#151
post #135

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…

I had a friend who worked for a company that built AI call centres. I naively thought that customers would use it to do "password reset" type workflows and have an escape hatch for customers to talk to a human if the AI couldnt handle what they needed. Surprisingly few of them wanted that. If the AI couldnt handle their issue they mostly wanted customers to just fuck off.

> If the AI couldnt handle their issue they mostly wanted customers to just fuck off.

Witness the future of business and society

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#152
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.

This is an oversimplification.

When people talk about wanting "free support", they mean that they want support included with the price of the product (no extra charges), but you're still going to get what you paid for, and expecting too much might not get you what you want.

If you pay $20/month for a software subscription for your small business, you're going to get a different kind of support than the enterprise customer paying $100k/month. The small business customer will get support via email with multi-day SLAs, and the enterprise customer will get priority support via screen-share with same-day SLAs.

And there are free-tier services that offer limited support, where users that don't pay anything expect to be treated like they're full-fledged customers.

There a limited scenario here, where a paying customer has so many problems with the product that the cost of support exceeds the revenue the customer provides, and when one can confidently say that this is not the result of an overly-needy customer, you spend the money figuring out the problem and making sure that the solution is available to help any customer that follows. The cost of support my exceed revenue for one customer, but once the solution is in the knowledge base, you don't have to repeat those costs again for the next customer.

But there are also small customers who fumble the product and put too much strain on support until a decision is made not to prioritize them over other customers. I have seen small customers with unreasonable expectations get "fired" simply because their revenue wasn't worth it.

If a company routinely sees support costs exceed revenue, that's usually the company's fault for having a faulty and/or hard-to-support product. If a single customer's support costs exceed the revenue they provide, that's usually the customer's fault for leaning too heavily on support to be their personal I.T. provider.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#153
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For a community full of engineers, I'm always surprised that people always take absolutionist views on minor technical decisions, rather than thinking of the tradeoffs made that got there.

The obvious trade off here is engineering effort vs. development cost, and when the tech support solution is "have you tried turning it off, then on again?" We know which path was chosen

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#154

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…

Which product?

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#156

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…

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 a…

The problem is consumers are the ones who decided this. I used to only buy web hosting from companies with 24/7 US based phone tech support. Today this basically doesn't exist, because cheaper options not offering it ate their lunch.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#157

  > The only acceptable pro-AI response to the accusation of AI Slop is to join team Anti-Slop.
I'll never understand why this is controversial. Especially in techie and engineering communities. We of all people love to be grumpy. It's in our nature because the first step to solving problems is recognizing them. Sweeping shit under the rug is for business people who's only interest is money and have no care for the product

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#158
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Exactly, if 1/2 their support calls are PW resets, and that costs them a fortune solve the problem, don't slap AI lipstick on the chat pig.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#159
post #114
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.

Support chatbots are pretty much the only scenario where "don't make me talk to your chatbot" is a problem in practice. If someone tries to use a chatbot to engage with me in a personal or professional discussion, I don't lose anything of value by simply ignoring them permanently. It's only when the party using the chatbot has something I want that I have any incentive to even consider playing along.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#160

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 interact…

Maybe you can get a Trump >100% discount from the bot if you keep at it.

It's unfortunate that you keep accepting their lower rate though. If a very small percentage of people are willing to continue paying even at slightly lower rates the the vast majority of people, it is still earning them money. Maybe you really didn't want to cancel? I always thought wanting to cancel was black and white, but you've turned it into shades of gray.

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