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Right. You contact a human because you want a guarded administrative action to be taken. For all the impressiveness of these chat bots, I think people are stil

Right. You contact a human because you want a guarded administrative action to be taken. For all the impressiveness of these chat bots, I think people are still skeptical and hesitant to give it levers that are actually connected to things. It's hard to hold a computer program accountable in any nuanced way when it starts misbehaving other than kicking it to the curb

pessimizer 3y ago
> For all the impressiveness of these chat bots, I think people are still skeptical and hesitant to give it levers that are actually connected to things. They don't want a person to escalate you either, but you can pressure a person in ways that a chatbot cannot be pressured. At least a person (and their employer) wants to get you off the phone; the person because they're sick of being yelled at and coming up with reasons not to escalate, and their employer because they're paying for the time spent. A chatbot is happy to talk you in circles all day, and costs near nothing. Empowering chatbots is not the point, one of the advantages of chatbots is that they can be disempowered more easily than humans.
- cudgy 3y ago
  “At least a person (and their employer) wants to get you off the phone; the person because they're sick of being yelled at and coming up with reasons not to escalate, and their employer because they're paying for the time spent.” Click. Disconnect. Easy. They just disconnect the call when a customer is frustrating them and oftentimes disconnects happen when first reaching a person after sitting on hold for a long time. The other tactic is to transfer the customer around the call center into oblivion.
Karunamon 3y ago
For your average customer support case, there is nobody to hold accountable either when they screw up and cost you time or money. It's just another faceless agent of the company.

pessimizer 3y ago

> For all the impressiveness of these chat bots, I think people are still skeptical and hesitant to give it levers that are actually connected to things. They don't want a person to escalate you either, but you can pressure a person in ways that a chatbot cannot be pressured. At least a person (and their employer) wants to get you off the phone; the person because they're sick of being yelled at and coming up with reasons not to escalate, and their employer because they're paying for the time spent. A chatbot is happy to talk you in circles all day, and costs near nothing. Empowering chatbots is not the point, one of the advantages of chatbots is that they can be disempowered more easily than humans.

cudgy 3y ago
“At least a person (and their employer) wants to get you off the phone; the person because they're sick of being yelled at and coming up with reasons not to escalate, and their employer because they're paying for the time spent.” Click. Disconnect. Easy. They just disconnect the call when a customer is frustrating them and oftentimes disconnects happen when first reaching a person after sitting on hold for a long time. The other tactic is to transfer the customer around the call center into oblivion.

Karunamon 3y ago

For your average customer support case, there is nobody to hold accountable either when they screw up and cost you time or money. It's just another faceless agent of the company.