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I chatted with a chat bot this morning for getting reimbursed for a recalled product. It went fine. It was quick and easy. Chat bots type a lot faster than c

by bradfa 3y ago

I chatted with a chat bot this morning for getting reimbursed for a recalled product. It went fine. It was quick and easy. Chat bots type a lot faster than call center pay-grade humans.

richbell 3y ago
Did you need to chat with a bot for that? I've seen a worrying trend of companies creating what could be basic forms as "interactive" chat bots.
- mrweasel 3y ago
  It could be a form, but a custom one. You'd need someone to create the form, put it some on the website where people can find it. The bot already has a spot, no need for a new interface/form, it's easy enough to find and it's just a small update to the database powering the bot.
  - pavel_lishin 3y ago
    Easy for the company, maybe, but it puts me in the awkward position of having to roleplay with a robot.
    - mrweasel 3y ago
      Better to waste the customers time than your own money. That sounds like it belongs in the Ferengis "Rules of Acquisition".
      - pavel_lishin 3y ago
        Keep wasting their time, and soon you won't have much money.
- bradfa 3y ago
  Yes, it required me to chat with a bot to do the process. It could have been a form but some of the choices for which recalled products and how many of each recalled product would have likely made the form rather convoluted. Chat bots like this, where basically they're executing a wizard type questionnaire seem totally reasonable to me. It's approachable to a wide audience, only asks you one question at a time in a clear way, and can easily be executed on a mobile device or normal computer.
  - richbell 3y ago
    > It could have been a form but some of the choices for which recalled products and how many of each recalled product would have likely made the form rather convoluted. I'm not sure I understand how a chat bot is better in this case. This sounds exactly what a form is for, and you can have multi-step forms or wizards. Incidentally, a ubiquitous feature in with forms that I seldom see on chat bots is the ability to return to an earlier question and change your answer.
robviren 3y ago
I'll take a human any day. The amount of times I've had a person say "Oh. I see the system always does this." And suddenly my previously intractable problem disappeared is staggering. Granted experienced people are hard to find, but when false positives occur it's the only thing I have seen fix it. I need that.
- hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
  If only there was a way to speak to a chat bot first, in order to filter out the 90/99/99.9/99.99% of problems that can be handled efficiently by the automaton, and then transfer to a human being for the most difficult tasks!
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    If only there was a way to quickly bypass the chatbot when you knew you had a problem that needed a human. But it was almost the same before chatbots. You got a human, but it was a human that had a script, and didn't have authority to depart from it. You had to get that human to get to the end of their script (where they were allowed to actually think), or else you had to get them to transfer you to someone who could. It was almost exactly like a chatbot, except with humans.
    - bluGill 3y ago
      Some of those humans had a script that was useful and thus worth going through - 99% of the time your issue is the same as the one everyone else is having. Maybe you check before calling things like it is plugged in, but even then there are many common problems and since you don't have the checklist they need to go through it to see what item on the checklist you forgot. What humans do well though is listen - the 1 minute explanation often often gives enough clues to skip 75% of the checklist. Every chatbot I've worked ends up failing because I use some word or phrasing in my description that wasn't in their script and so they make me check things on the checklist that are obviously not the issue (the light are on, so that means it is plugged in)
danpalmer 3y ago
> Chat bots type a lot faster than call center pay-grade humans. Most chat bots I've interacted with have artificial delays and typing indicators that remove this one advantage in favour of instead gaslighting me about what I'm talking to.
- mlrtime 3y ago
  How do you tell the difference between an artificial delay and a slow API endpoint? Are we measuring all the response times and looking a distribution?
  - danpalmer 3y ago
    A 10-20 second delay for a line or two of text feels artificial to me. Many chatbots now have the "..." pop up for a few periods within that time to suggest someone is typing as well. Maybe they do have a really slow API, but those sort of response times are uncommon and when the chat window and everything else about it seems to be working much faster, I think it's a reasonable conclusion to draw that it's artificial.
lxgr 3y ago
If they can build a chatbot that handles reimbursements, they can create an equivalent web form for the same concern. Same outcome, infinitely better discoverability. If nothing else, the bot could program that for them! By all means, provide a chatbot and let people that don’t like reading FAQs and long support forms themselves try their luck with it. Sometimes, that might even be me! But please, provide both. There are no excuses for this sprawling “bot only” bullshit. Or, even better, just let me send an email that I can archive responses to on my end and hold the company accountable for whatever their first level support or chatbot throws at me. I’m so tired of all of these ephemeral phone calls or chats (that always hold me accountable by recording my voice/chat, but I can rarely do the reverse on my phone).
butlike 3y ago
Just wait unti you get the post-call survey for the different chat bot personas.

by bradfa 3y ago

I chatted with a chat bot this morning for getting reimbursed for a recalled product. It went fine. It was quick and easy. Chat bots type a lot faster than call center pay-grade humans.

richbell 3y ago

Did you need to chat with a bot for that? I've seen a worrying trend of companies creating what could be basic forms as "interactive" chat bots.

mrweasel 3y ago
It could be a form, but a custom one. You'd need someone to create the form, put it some on the website where people can find it. The bot already has a spot, no need for a new interface/form, it's easy enough to find and it's just a small update to the database powering the bot.
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  Easy for the company, maybe, but it puts me in the awkward position of having to roleplay with a robot.
  - mrweasel 3y ago
    Better to waste the customers time than your own money. That sounds like it belongs in the Ferengis "Rules of Acquisition".
    - pavel_lishin 3y ago
      Keep wasting their time, and soon you won't have much money.
bradfa 3y ago
Yes, it required me to chat with a bot to do the process. It could have been a form but some of the choices for which recalled products and how many of each recalled product would have likely made the form rather convoluted. Chat bots like this, where basically they're executing a wizard type questionnaire seem totally reasonable to me. It's approachable to a wide audience, only asks you one question at a time in a clear way, and can easily be executed on a mobile device or normal computer.
- richbell 3y ago
  > It could have been a form but some of the choices for which recalled products and how many of each recalled product would have likely made the form rather convoluted. I'm not sure I understand how a chat bot is better in this case. This sounds exactly what a form is for, and you can have multi-step forms or wizards. Incidentally, a ubiquitous feature in with forms that I seldom see on chat bots is the ability to return to an earlier question and change your answer.

robviren 3y ago

I'll take a human any day. The amount of times I've had a person say "Oh. I see the system always does this." And suddenly my previously intractable problem disappeared is staggering. Granted experienced people are hard to find, but when false positives occur it's the only thing I have seen fix it. I need that.

hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
If only there was a way to speak to a chat bot first, in order to filter out the 90/99/99.9/99.99% of problems that can be handled efficiently by the automaton, and then transfer to a human being for the most difficult tasks!
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  If only there was a way to quickly bypass the chatbot when you knew you had a problem that needed a human. But it was almost the same before chatbots. You got a human, but it was a human that had a script, and didn't have authority to depart from it. You had to get that human to get to the end of their script (where they were allowed to actually think), or else you had to get them to transfer you to someone who could. It was almost exactly like a chatbot, except with humans.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    Some of those humans had a script that was useful and thus worth going through - 99% of the time your issue is the same as the one everyone else is having. Maybe you check before calling things like it is plugged in, but even then there are many common problems and since you don't have the checklist they need to go through it to see what item on the checklist you forgot. What humans do well though is listen - the 1 minute explanation often often gives enough clues to skip 75% of the checklist. Every chatbot I've worked ends up failing because I use some word or phrasing in my description that wasn't in their script and so they make me check things on the checklist that are obviously not the issue (the light are on, so that means it is plugged in)

danpalmer 3y ago

> Chat bots type a lot faster than call center pay-grade humans. Most chat bots I've interacted with have artificial delays and typing indicators that remove this one advantage in favour of instead gaslighting me about what I'm talking to.

mlrtime 3y ago
How do you tell the difference between an artificial delay and a slow API endpoint? Are we measuring all the response times and looking a distribution?
- danpalmer 3y ago
  A 10-20 second delay for a line or two of text feels artificial to me. Many chatbots now have the "..." pop up for a few periods within that time to suggest someone is typing as well. Maybe they do have a really slow API, but those sort of response times are uncommon and when the chat window and everything else about it seems to be working much faster, I think it's a reasonable conclusion to draw that it's artificial.

lxgr 3y ago

If they can build a chatbot that handles reimbursements, they can create an equivalent web form for the same concern. Same outcome, infinitely better discoverability. If nothing else, the bot could program that for them! By all means, provide a chatbot and let people that don’t like reading FAQs and long support forms themselves try their luck with it. Sometimes, that might even be me! But please, provide both. There are no excuses for this sprawling “bot only” bullshit. Or, even better, just let me send an email that I can archive responses to on my end and hold the company accountable for whatever their first level support or chatbot throws at me. I’m so tired of all of these ephemeral phone calls or chats (that always hold me accountable by recording my voice/chat, but I can rarely do the reverse on my phone).

butlike 3y ago

Just wait unti you get the post-call survey for the different chat bot personas.