Chatbots Don't Deliver Good Customer Service • Hacker News Board

Re: Chatbots Don't Deliver Good Customer Service

#31

Post by ryandrake » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 2:06 PM UTC

Pigo wrote: post #7

ejo3 wrote: post #2

I use probably about 15 cloud SASS products for my company. Over the past year many of them have switched from offering either live chat or email support to chat bots. Often they will send out a marketing email pitching it as a huge improvement in support. My experience with chat bot support ranges from frustrating to infuriating, especially when I need help with something business critical.

I'm not sure what the right adjective is to describe how it makes me feel when I encounter one, especially if it's with a company that we're doing serious business with. Disrespectful? Condescending? I think belittling works, because it definitely gives you the impression that you're concern is trivial. Now that they have your money they just need to placate you with as little effort as possible.

I mean, the same is true for phone bots, and companies have been using them as tech support for decades. At least with phone bots, however, there is usually an incantation (often involving pressing zero repeatedly) that can get you to a live human.

Re: Chatbots Don't Deliver Good Customer Service

#32

Post by tyingq » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 2:11 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #18

epicide wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's a high risk for their reputation, though. Compared to other forms of support, it is still better. I'd rather talk to a chatbot than: - the same (or worse) bot over a phone - someone who only vaguely speaks my language - nothing/nobody at all - someone who speaks my language but spends 10 minutes and 30 "thank you"s to tell me they can't accomplish what I need The only form that wins out is a living…

Personally, if a company can't provide support where you speak to a human, I'd prefer that they be honest about that - rather than having my hopes raised then dashed and my time wasted by a chat/phone/e-mail contact that doesn't go to a human.

I worked on some IVR implementations some time ago. Quite a few would interpret and understand swearing, and route you to a human via a priority call queue. Similar for multiple button presses of the zero key.

Re: Chatbots Don't Deliver Good Customer Service

#33

Post by Pica_soO » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 2:11 PM UTC

ucarion wrote: post #23

ysavir wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you're on to something. Perhaps chatbots would be easier to work with if we were able to examine inventory and see a list of available commands?

It's considered good style to support user messages like "what can I say?" or "where was I?" for precisely this reason.

You are standing in front of a white house.

Re: Chatbots Don't Deliver Good Customer Service

#34

Post by swiley » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 2:14 PM UTC

If you can spend the time to write good documentation for your product then you don't need a chatbot, just good search and good formatting.

If you can't be bothered to write good documentation then you won't be bothered to feed useful information into the chatbot, which is way more clumsy than a searchable manual anyway.

Re: Chatbots Don't Deliver Good Customer Service

#35

Post by shangxiao » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 2:17 PM UTC

computator wrote: post #26

> When you're filling a signup form, you instantly know what information they'll need from you. You can decide if you're comfortable sharing them before you engage in filling it. If only that were true! The trend is to ask for a little bit info at a time, then take you to the next page where it asks for other info, and so on. You don't see at a glance the whole form anymore. I resort to filling in fake info on sign-u…

Along similar lines, I detest a trend I've noticed where login forms show the username/email & password on separate forms. It's annoying to have to click through more than is necessary and additionally breaks my password manager's auto login.

Re: Chatbots Don't Deliver Good Customer Service

#36

Post by sebslomski » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 2:19 PM UTC

Chatbots are extremely hard. Many of us are jumping on the bot wagon and leverage AI with NLP & intent recognition. But they miss the important bit: It's all about the conversation itself. "If content creation isn't right, the conversation won't delight" (Adrian Zumbrunnen) The technical aspect behind chat bots is only the tip of the iceberg. We need Conversation Experience Designers instead of AI Engineers & UI Designers. Many chatbots start with questions like "how can I help you? Type something". What should I as a customer expect from the bot? When I visit a website, it's pretty soon clear how it works and what to expect. This doesn't apply to bots.

Re: Chatbots Don't Deliver Good Customer Service

#37

Post by thanatropism » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 2:26 PM UTC

shangxiao wrote: post #35

computator wrote: post #26

> When you're filling a signup form, you instantly know what information they'll need from you. You can decide if you're comfortable sharing them before you engage in filling it. If only that were true! The trend is to ask for a little bit info at a time, then take you to the next page where it asks for other info, and so on. You don't see at a glance the whole form anymore. I resort to filling in fake info on sign-u…

Along similar lines, I detest a trend I've noticed where login forms show the username/email & password on separate forms. It's annoying to have to click through more than is necessary and additionally breaks my password manager's auto login.

Tumblr has done this for how long?

Worse yet, they have very similar (except for color) buttons for "Log in" and "Sign up". Often if you have bad internet and the last layer of the page hasn't loaded yet, you don't know which button to press.

Re: Chatbots Don't Deliver Good Customer Service

#38

Post by olavgg » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 2:26 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #19

olavgg wrote: post #13

Chatbots do work, those who say it doesn't work have just tried the really bad ones. Examples of chatbots that do work Nuance's Nina https://www.windstream.com/Support/ Jenn (unknown who is behind it) https://www.alaskaair.com/ Our James https://master.boost.ai/

>Jenn (unknown who is behind it) If you meant who built it... http://nextit.com/work/alaska-airlines

Thanks!

Re: Chatbots Don't Deliver Good Customer Service

#39

Post by DustinOfDenver » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 2:27 PM UTC

Great article! I have been working on my own Chatbot solution based on IBM's Watson (supposedly cutting edge tech)... it is cumbersome... it cannot do something simple like extract a full address from a conversation (I think cities are still in beta)... The good news, there is a definite opportunity for some start up. AI is all the rage and for solving a specific problem with clearly defined parameters (or if you have a team of a few 100 people working on it) it is getting pretty good. But interacting with a human is many things... "defined" is not one of them.

Re: Chatbots Don't Deliver Good Customer Service

#40

Post by jkaptur » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 2:28 PM UTC

ronack wrote: post #14

These are pretty well-worn arguments against chatbots. There's an overuse of bots for tasks that do not benefit from a conversational interface (checking the weather, surveys, promotions, etc.). But if you stop thinking of bots as sentient beings and instead treat them as domain-specific command line interfaces, you may get more utility out of them. For instance, it's possible just typing/saying "Send me a pizza with…

I think that the pizza analogy is really useful. We've had intelligent voice-capable agents for pizza ordering for ages: calling the store. People hate it! They want a specialized UI for ordering pizza.