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

Re: Chatbots Don't Deliver Good Customer Service

#61

Post by Rjevski » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 3:52 PM UTC

The issue with customer service is that a lot of companies end up with awful CS because 1) they outsource it to braindead monkeys who hate their job and are paid pennies and 2) there is no way for someone to complete their task without talking to CS (no documentation, etc).

So instead of pouring endless money into chatbots, allow people to do whatever they wanted without involving CS. Provide good, up to date and easy to find documentation and a web interface if the task needs data entry (porting your number, changing your billing details, etc). This will reduce the load on your CS which means you can now bring this back in-house and no longer rely on an outsourced disgruntled workforce.

Re: Chatbots Don't Deliver Good Customer Service

#62

Post by vkou » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 3:52 PM UTC

To the surprise of nobody who has ever gone through automated telephone system hell. Whenever I bump into one, I impulsively shout 'zero' 'zero' 'fucking operator' into the phone.

Re: Chatbots Don't Deliver Good Customer Service

#63

Post by mercer » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 3:57 PM UTC

So, in contrast to the article I personally feel excited about the potential of chatbots - especially as custom and user-friendly CLI's/UI's more than as AI-driven 'human' interfaces, at least for now - in a way I've not felt excited about anything in a long while (both from a business and ideological perspective, but I care more about the latter, all things considered).

I'd just like to ask that if anyone is seriously pursuing chatbots, beyond just helping businesses or consultants sell the 'next big thing', I'd really, really love to talk. My email address is on my profile page.

Re: Chatbots Don't Deliver Good Customer Service

#64

Post by jtms » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 4:06 PM UTC

throwaway2016a wrote: post #3

Yet. Chat bots don't deliver good customer service yet. They will get better and eventually get better than humans. It's a new use of technology, give it time to improve. I already know of companies using AI to adapt to customers like this article says chat bots don't do. It's cutting edge but it is out there.

came here to say exactly this

Re: Chatbots Don't Deliver Good Customer Service

#65

Post by splatcollision » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 4:06 PM UTC

deegles wrote: post #4

I develop Alexa skills and I agree with the article. Another point that is missing is that the technology hasn't "closed the loop". We have great ASR and NLU available, but responses still need to be built by hand or templated. This is the major reason bots feel so unnatural. I think there's a lot of opportunity for robust Natural Language Generation solutions to help build voice apps and chat bots that can operate m…

Agree on the need for a declarative high level language. Something akin to Markdown, but for chatbot flows.

Re: Chatbots Don't Deliver Good Customer Service

#66

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 4:08 PM UTC

radarsat1 wrote: post #29

throwaway2016a wrote: post #3

Yet. Chat bots don't deliver good customer service yet. They will get better and eventually get better than humans. It's a new use of technology, give it time to improve. I already know of companies using AI to adapt to customers like this article says chat bots don't do. It's cutting edge but it is out there.

> It's a new use of technology, give it time to improve. Why is it a new use of technology? I seem to remember chatbots being around in the 90's... or am I imagining things? Of course, they sucked, and people said "they will get better and eventually get better than humans." I don't see what has changed in that regard. Maybe the assertion is still true, but despite advances in NLP and other areas of ML, it hasn't see…

[deleted]

Re: Chatbots Don't Deliver Good Customer Service

#67

Post by vkou » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 4:10 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #55

michaelt wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. But in that time the early adopters' reputations will be in the gutter because chatbots are the worst customer support out there.

Chatbots aside, Comcast and United Airlines continue to be big consumer businesses despite horrible customer service reputations. Socially it's bad, but economically it's hard to justify spending that much on customer support. (Those companies also enjoy semi-monopoly positions, though, so I wouldn't recommend emulating that unless you enjoy a similar position in the market.)

Comcast is a monopoly, with a huge barrier to entry.

People complain that UA hasn't learned anything about customer service. I am surprised that those people haven't learned anything about UA, and are still flying it. (Perhaps it's because flyers don't actually care about customer service, and will take whichever flight saves them $15.)

Re: Chatbots Don't Deliver Good Customer Service

#68

Post by cdubzzz » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 4:15 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #62

To the surprise of nobody who has ever gone through automated telephone system hell. Whenever I bump into one, I impulsively shout 'zero' 'zero' 'fucking operator' into the phone.

I usually just jam the zero key. Most of the time it works.

Have you ever used one that emits "typing" sounds in to the phone? AT&T started doing this some time ago on their small business wireless support line. I jam zero until it says, "Ok, enter the number you are calling about", I enter it, and it says, "Ok, let me look that up for you", then keyboard taping sound... I can't even describe my reaction the first time I heard it. So, so stupid.

Re: Chatbots Don't Deliver Good Customer Service

#69

Post by JadeNB » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 4:19 PM UTC

varelse wrote: post #42

I suspect what's great about assistants like Siri, Alexa, and even Google Now is less that they have voice interfaces and more that they have well-funded support teams behind them to deliver exponentially more efficient routing of queries into appropriate knowledge-bases based on the best of contemporary research driven by their respective corporate thinktanks. Compare and contrast with data mining the logs of call c…

> Recently, I've noticed they hang up on this behavior

I've definitely had them ignore any sensible operator prompts, but actually hanging up? That's a step beyond. Care to name and shame any offenders?

(I've always enjoyed the claim, and once or twice believe I've observed the behaviour—though I am sceptical—that a lot of these systems scan for obscenity, and route to an agent. When I get a robocall while I'm out walking (phone for audiobooks), I always curse at it for a while, just in case. Even though it almost never gets an agent, it's a good stress reliever!)

Re: Chatbots Don't Deliver Good Customer Service

#70

Post by rhino369 » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 4:34 PM UTC

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #51

thanatropism wrote: post #43

Siri is not essential . Every time it fails to deliver a feature of my phone, I can thumb my way to it in seconds. So it's actually fun whenever it works. Also: because it's not essential , one gets to adjust to its failures. There's a broad range of queries for which I know Siri will just say "this is what I found online for..."; I tend to just open the browser and use Google's autocomplete instead. So... I have a p…

That's my feeling of Siri usage as well, that it's not reliable enough to just sort of take for granted. But, what's really interesting to me is that Alexa has surpassed that level (at least in my household). So that for routine things, it's not a novelty to use it, but an actual improvement. This is still obviously for non-essential services like music, games, weather, etc. but it's also reliable enough to handle th…

Alexa isn't really a chat bot. You issue commands to her. She does an amazing job at it. Seriously, the voice recognition is truly great. But you are still issuing a command.

You've just learned the language she speaks.