8 ms·

This article does a good job explaining why they were overhyped: https://blog.growthbot.org/chatbots-were-the-next-big-thing-what-happened https://blog.growthbo

This article does a good job explaining why they were overhyped: https://blog.growthbot.org/chatbots-were-the-next-big-thing-what-happened https://blog.growthbot.org/chatbots-were-the-next-big-thing-... Basically, people were too occupied with the fancy technology, and forgot about actually solving problems. People want to get things done, and clicking and choosing options in a GUI is already an very efficient way of doing so. When they want to do more complex things, we don't want to talk to a chatbot, only to eventually get an useless response like "Sorry, we can't do that request online. Please call us" (if I wanted to call someone, I wouldn't be using you!)

sethammons 8y ago
I recently attempted CenturyLink's chatbot for support (it is a hurdle to attempt to alleviate support chats). It got to a prompt, something like: You can give me your membership number or phone number. Which would you prefer? 1) membership number 2) phone number If you type "phone" or "phone number," it would not understand you and take you back a couple of levels in its internal hierarchy. Apparently it wanted you to type "1" or "2." Grrrr. It is a terrible interface. Automated tellers, chatbots, all of it, it shows utter disrespect for the customer. Give me a live person or a great web experience (preferably both).
fatnoah 8y ago
I have a fair amount of experience in a related field, which is messaging-based service and came to the article is spot-on. Some companies simply wanted to map their phone support flows to messaging (yuck!) and others wanted to do more pre-chat type of activities, such as getting basic information from the customer. For these latter use cases, some level of "AI" was useful to let a customer communicate with more natural language rather than having to enter a specific number or keyword, but you still essentially ended up with an analogue of a phone system. In my case, a goal was better agent efficiency (i.e. fewer agents handle more customers) AND happier customers. A sweet spot for these chatbots was for them to handle specific interactions but not the whole conversation. For example, handling some basic pre-chat information gathering, or in the case of an interaction around rebooking a hotel stay, handling the date and room selection when using a medium that supports rich messaging, such as FB Messenger or iMessage. Until we have fully conversational chatbots, it's going to be really hard to have a solution that a) eliminates agents from the equation AND b) results in higher customer satisfaction.

sethammons 8y ago

I recently attempted CenturyLink's chatbot for support (it is a hurdle to attempt to alleviate support chats). It got to a prompt, something like: You can give me your membership number or phone number. Which would you prefer? 1) membership number 2) phone number If you type "phone" or "phone number," it would not understand you and take you back a couple of levels in its internal hierarchy. Apparently it wanted you to type "1" or "2." Grrrr. It is a terrible interface. Automated tellers, chatbots, all of it, it shows utter disrespect for the customer. Give me a live person or a great web experience (preferably both).

fatnoah 8y ago

I have a fair amount of experience in a related field, which is messaging-based service and came to the article is spot-on. Some companies simply wanted to map their phone support flows to messaging (yuck!) and others wanted to do more pre-chat type of activities, such as getting basic information from the customer. For these latter use cases, some level of "AI" was useful to let a customer communicate with more natural language rather than having to enter a specific number or keyword, but you still essentially ended up with an analogue of a phone system. In my case, a goal was better agent efficiency (i.e. fewer agents handle more customers) AND happier customers. A sweet spot for these chatbots was for them to handle specific interactions but not the whole conversation. For example, handling some basic pre-chat information gathering, or in the case of an interaction around rebooking a hotel stay, handling the date and room selection when using a medium that supports rich messaging, such as FB Messenger or iMessage. Until we have fully conversational chatbots, it's going to be really hard to have a solution that a) eliminates agents from the equation AND b) results in higher customer satisfaction.