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Customers don't want chat bots

creativegood.com

41–50 of 473 posts

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#41

Typically chatbots that I interact with are just attempting to steer me back towards FAQs. I don’t need a different interface to search your documentation in an attempt to keep me on the cheap customer service path and away from the expensive customer service path. Which isn’t to say they can’t be helpful. I’d much rather chat with a bot than call a person, if the bot is capable of doing the things I need. The thing…

I recently had a chat with the Amazon bot for a refund of something that had not been delivered. That went very well!

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#42
post #31

People don't want a useless chat bots, more often than not they seem deliberately programmed to be obstructive. If you told it you wanted a refund for order xyz, and it immediately gave you a refund, I'm sure people would like it.

You can provide that with a simple HTML form though.

Yes, - but there are no bragging rights, promotions, or other rewards for the team/manager who put clear, useful HTML forms into production.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#43
The reason why LLMs are truly revolutionary is that they suddenly allow to connect and interface systems that used to require a human in the loop because of their ambiguous interfaces.

LLMs can (and will) do a lot more than providing chatbot-like interfaces. Instead, they will power agents that can manipulate a variety of tools and interface with extremely diverse systems, including end users, SMEs, etc.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#44
post #6

I have never met a chat bot that worked . I try the same question worded 6 different ways, I try asking it to connect me to an actual fucking human being. If it even does I still get stuck in a choice menu at first, which half of the time tells me that I can get help with this via their chat bots and disconnects. Fuck chat bots and the money-saving horse they rode in on.

They combine the charm and brevity of telephone voice recognition with the text parsing power of a knock-off early 90s adventure game.

Now you're just making it sound cooler than it actually is.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#45

Today I needed to contact a government service office for a task that only a human could perform. Now unfortunately, the phone tree of this office is broad and deep, you need to authenticate with about 4 data points before continuing, and if you hit the wrong option after authenticating, they will hang up on you without a second thought. So I authenticated got through to the correct option on the first try, and it se…

HMRC?

I'll bet my tax rebate on it.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#46
I dont want useless customer support. Wether that's a human or a bot.

It's extremely frustrating to have a real issue, take for instance a plane cancelled or delayed when travelling with kids, and not being able to talk to a real person who can actually help. Let alone having to wait 30-60 minutes to get a hold of someone.

Nowadays most large organisations are structured now that it's impossible to have a conversation with a human who actually has the power to make a decision. All they repeat is info that's found online and tell you to fill in a form or email.

In that case a chatbot is probably better for both sides, mainly for the person behind the phone who doesn't get verbally abused on a regular basis.

Sadly best way to get helped by corps nowadays is to tweet to them.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#47

> Instead, the reason people go to customer service is because of a question that’s so specific, or complicated, or gnarly in some respect, that there’s no way the app will have the answer: you need a human. I can see the author probably hasn't done much customer service? I'd say maybe 1% of customer queries go in that direction. I agree dealing with a bot in that situation sucks, but a big chunk of customer question…

Yeah, that statement is so out there and incorrect that it invalidates the whole article even though I agree with the premise.

Re: Customers don't want chat bots

#48

Typically chatbots that I interact with are just attempting to steer me back towards FAQs. I don’t need a different interface to search your documentation in an attempt to keep me on the cheap customer service path and away from the expensive customer service path. Which isn’t to say they can’t be helpful. I’d much rather chat with a bot than call a person, if the bot is capable of doing the things I need. The thing…

I recently had a chat with the Amazon bot for a refund of something that had not been delivered. That went very well!

I had the same, it refunded me, then 3 weeks later I got a notification from Amazon that they would be taking the money off me.

I complained and was ignored. It was only $10 but it teaches a lesson.

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