“Yes, I am human:” learnings from fast customer service via live chat

Post by CountHackulus » Fri, Jan 21, 2011, 5:43 AM UTC

nachopg wrote: post #15

nostromo wrote: post #3

I used to work for a competitor of Olark's and I can confirm this happens all the time. What's funny is that there are two types of companies: 1) Trusts their well-paid chat operators and allows them to type freely. 2) Force-feeds their operators 'canned responses' (as are used in email support) and doesn't encourage them to move off script. #2 is always what marketing departments want, but it was always worse for th…

I was the Mechanical Turk (not in the "amazon" sense of the words) behind the Olark in that conversation. I was never instructed in what to say when we get a question from a customer. We only have to follow three simple laws, in a specific order: never injure a human being, obey orders by human beings and protect our own existence. That's all. But, hey, saying "how can I help you?" sounded right to me, so I use it of…

Post by mercurialist » Fri, Jan 21, 2011, 6:06 AM UTC

meatsock wrote: post #5

mitko wrote: post #2

That will work until an AI can pass the Turing Test.

.. there may be more important things to worry about when that happens.

Post by manoloe » Fri, Jan 21, 2011, 7:28 AM UTC

meatsock wrote: post #5

mitko wrote: post #2

That will work until an AI can pass the Turing Test.

.. there may be more important things to worry about when that happens.

Post by manoloe » Fri, Jan 21, 2011, 7:50 AM UTC

elxx wrote: post #26

manoloe wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting... we'll do some tests on alternate ways to introduce ourselves. Being able to test out different approaches real-time is another benefit from live chat. thanks!

My first thought looking at the transcripts was that seeing "IndexTank" as the screen name answering the questions rather than a person's name would make me suspect "robot" at first too. Either way, I agree that introducing yourself to the user with your own name will do a lot to reduce the suspicion.

Post by swombat » Fri, Jan 21, 2011, 9:37 AM UTC

CountHackulus wrote: post #21

nachopg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was the Mechanical Turk (not in the "amazon" sense of the words) behind the Olark in that conversation. I was never instructed in what to say when we get a question from a customer. We only have to follow three simple laws, in a specific order: never injure a human being, obey orders by human beings and protect our own existence. That's all. But, hey, saying "how can I help you?" sounded right to me, so I use it of…

Those rules are surprisingly similar to Isaac Asimov's 3 laws of robotics.