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I find those chat boxes to be completely irritating. Doubly so if it doesn't go straight to a human, there are ones that want to shove you through the crappy ze

by vertis 6y ago

I find those chat boxes to be completely irritating. Doubly so if it doesn't go straight to a human, there are ones that want to shove you through the crappy zendesk "are you sure this helpdesk article doesn't answer your question" flow. Anything that pops up and interrupts me while I'm reading something else is pretty much a deal breaker. Having to stop what I'm doing to hit a little X and get back to it has cost a bunch of companies business from me. Having said all that, there are a couple of companies that use them in the correct way. The one that springs to mind is xolo.io. Xolo is a one stop shop for my business (expenses, invoicing, tax accounting) and has chat staffed by humans and it's a fantastic way to interact with them (as an existing customer). I message them, and assuming it's within business hours*, I get a rapid response and answer to my question / solution to my problem.

ben_w 6y ago
> I find those chat boxes to be completely irritating. The supermajority here does, or so I would guess. We aren’t representative, and that’s important to remember when designing user interfaces.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  "Non-representativeness" is overused; we voluntarily take away our own voice about UX, and then complain that it sucks. In context of UI annoyances and regular people, it's also worth remembering that the representative (i.e. not tech-savvy) population accepts what it's given. They don't have the mental models to conceptualize what exactly is it that annoys them, and they don't have a voice to express that annoyance. But they are annoyed, and you can hear that when you actually talk to them. The frequently heard things like "Why did they have to rearrange everything again?", "Google 'xyz contact form' because it's easier than finding it on the xyz site", or "My computer is slow it's probably viruses" are symptoms of that.
- vertis 6y ago
  There is a chance of survivorship bias. You get a bunch of messages through the chat interface and all of a sudden you believe it adds value, when in reality you're potentially annoying a whole bunch of users that aren't necessarily telling you that they're annoyed. A favourite story[1] (and I can't remember where I read it first) is the WWII bombers that the US military were trying to understand how to protect by analyzing the bullet holes. But the bullet holes only told part of the story. Any bomber that made it home to be analyzed had only been hit in a non-critical place. I'm not saying there isn't a place for chat, because I believe that they're absolutely is. A good, direct to the person chat, or unobtrusive ability to reach out is great. Shoving it in my face and breaking the flow of what I was doing is not. While I agree that HN readers aren't representative, I have a hard time believing that other people don't behave the same way when presented with annoying website behaviours (even if they later want the contact with the human). I've seen behind the scene of businesses that get customers asking stupid stupid questions, so I also understand the where the zendesk 'are you sure this doesn't answer your question' comes from. Doesn't make it any less annoying when applied badly to expert audiences. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
  - nickt 6y ago
    Discussed here recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23901836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23901836
  - 1123581321 6y ago
    The organization can’t do anything about visitors who are testing them with secret little rules about when they will withhold business. More typical power users are able to just ignore support options they don’t want to use and use the product. I like the WW2 story as well, but when chat increases total interactions and conversions, it’s hard to make a case for survivorship bias.
    - vertis 6y ago
      I'm not arguing against chat in itself, merely implementations of it that interrupt the flow of what you are doing. For example, chat popups that ask you to interact before you've had a chance to even read the title of the page. Every customer who hasn't purchased yet is part of a funnel, and you absolutely CAN test with an A/B test (or equivalent) whether you're losing people when you annoy them by popping something up on the screen. And perhaps I'm an outlier. If the A/B test says you get more sales when you annoy the customer, who am I to argue (or it annoys me and not them). But it does mean you will have them as a customer and not me, and that's fine. I don't think I'm wrong to use this as one of many indicators of how annoying a SaaS is going to be to deal with over the long term.
surajs 6y ago
> Having said all that, there are a couple of companies that use them in the correct way. this. chatbots are significantly less than what they're hyped up to be.

by vertis 6y ago

ben_w 6y ago

> I find those chat boxes to be completely irritating. The supermajority here does, or so I would guess. We aren’t representative, and that’s important to remember when designing user interfaces.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
"Non-representativeness" is overused; we voluntarily take away our own voice about UX, and then complain that it sucks. In context of UI annoyances and regular people, it's also worth remembering that the representative (i.e. not tech-savvy) population accepts what it's given. They don't have the mental models to conceptualize what exactly is it that annoys them, and they don't have a voice to express that annoyance. But they are annoyed, and you can hear that when you actually talk to them. The frequently heard things like "Why did they have to rearrange everything again?", "Google 'xyz contact form' because it's easier than finding it on the xyz site", or "My computer is slow it's probably viruses" are symptoms of that.
vertis 6y ago
There is a chance of survivorship bias. You get a bunch of messages through the chat interface and all of a sudden you believe it adds value, when in reality you're potentially annoying a whole bunch of users that aren't necessarily telling you that they're annoyed. A favourite story[1] (and I can't remember where I read it first) is the WWII bombers that the US military were trying to understand how to protect by analyzing the bullet holes. But the bullet holes only told part of the story. Any bomber that made it home to be analyzed had only been hit in a non-critical place. I'm not saying there isn't a place for chat, because I believe that they're absolutely is. A good, direct to the person chat, or unobtrusive ability to reach out is great. Shoving it in my face and breaking the flow of what I was doing is not. While I agree that HN readers aren't representative, I have a hard time believing that other people don't behave the same way when presented with annoying website behaviours (even if they later want the contact with the human). I've seen behind the scene of businesses that get customers asking stupid stupid questions, so I also understand the where the zendesk 'are you sure this doesn't answer your question' comes from. Doesn't make it any less annoying when applied badly to expert audiences. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
- nickt 6y ago
  Discussed here recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23901836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23901836
- 1123581321 6y ago
  The organization can’t do anything about visitors who are testing them with secret little rules about when they will withhold business. More typical power users are able to just ignore support options they don’t want to use and use the product. I like the WW2 story as well, but when chat increases total interactions and conversions, it’s hard to make a case for survivorship bias.
  - vertis 6y ago
    I'm not arguing against chat in itself, merely implementations of it that interrupt the flow of what you are doing. For example, chat popups that ask you to interact before you've had a chance to even read the title of the page. Every customer who hasn't purchased yet is part of a funnel, and you absolutely CAN test with an A/B test (or equivalent) whether you're losing people when you annoy them by popping something up on the screen. And perhaps I'm an outlier. If the A/B test says you get more sales when you annoy the customer, who am I to argue (or it annoys me and not them). But it does mean you will have them as a customer and not me, and that's fine. I don't think I'm wrong to use this as one of many indicators of how annoying a SaaS is going to be to deal with over the long term.

surajs 6y ago

> Having said all that, there are a couple of companies that use them in the correct way. this. chatbots are significantly less than what they're hyped up to be.