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The few times I've let a company sucker me into engaging with a chatbot, it was nothing but a worse interface to searching their support website. It was capabl

The few times I've let a company sucker me into engaging with a chatbot, it was nothing but a worse interface to searching their support website. It was capable of nothing but directing me to pages which could not help me, because what I needed was not more information about the problem I already knew I had, but someone to fix the damn problem.

libraryatnight 1y ago
Sometimes there will be a loop that's tough to break out of where the "Contact us" tells you to talk to a chat bot before putting in a ticket or showing you a phone number, and the bot won't be able to help but will spit you out to the page that tells you to talk to the chat bot rather than give you info for actual support until you find the special event chain that leads it to let you talk to people, or attempt to.
- nunez 1y ago
  Basically Uber support these days. Except theirs uses an LLM which gives you an even more useless layer of pretending to help.
GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
xfinity is absolutely lousy for this. at least with a human representative, i can let them know right out of the gate that, yes, i've power cycled my CPE, and yes, i've bypassed my own network to confirm the problem is not with my equipment. every single time i've had to go through this dance, they acknowledge that the problem is on their end and can fix it right away or put in a work order. every time i've had to interact with a chatbot, it wastes 15 minutes of my time before directing me to call (and deal with an audio chatbot until i convince it to let me talk to a person).
- thierrydamiba 1y ago
  Why should Xfinity make any changes if you still send them money every month?
  - Nextgrid 1y ago
    This is downvoted for some reason and yet it’s absolutely correct. There’s a reason telcos specifically are notorious for the shittiest customer service ever - because major telcos typically have a monopoly and/or long-term contracts the customer can’t easily leave. They could literally bill you and not provide any service, and most people would still pay at least a couple months while fighting to cancel or get it resolved to avoid getting their credit report dinged.
  - GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
    i'll try to assume this isn't a snarky response! but it kinda sounds like it. unfortunately, there are no "good" ISPs in my area. xfinity and the other big ones killed most of the competition via undercutting, lobbying and the legal system (ie, tying up municipal fiber/wifi initiatives in bureaucratic hell). since i no longer work from home, it's mostly just a convenience to have internet service for personal use. i actually use it very little, and pay for the cheapest option available, so it's not much money.
    - thierrydamiba 1y ago
      No snark, I just don’t see why Xfinity would have any motivation to change their process if it doesn’t have an impact on the bottom line.
      - GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
        ah well, we're dealing with economies of scale far greater than individual subscribers. and trust me, i've weighed going offline-only at home (not including mobile data), but for what relatively-little i do pay, i'm not ready to unplug just yet.
- mmh0000 1y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMcny_pixDw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMcny_pixDw
- kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
  I needed to cancel cable service recently. I lied about moving to another state to minimize the upsell and retention BS in their script but they still tried so desperately. After a human rep hung up on me, I threatened to sue when dealing with their interactive voice responder. That got me back to a human immediately.
- stouset 1y ago
  I moved states, and changed my service to the new address. They started billing me for both addresses for several months. Several calls and many, many hours later, I was finally able to get the double-billing resolved. But they didn't remove the charges that had accrued. Several calls later I was able to get someone who assured me they could deal with the issue. I demanded a $50 statement credit as compensation for my time. They flipped the sign on the statement credit, and it was an additional $50 charge. I got called by their collections department. I patiently explained the issue, and they were very sympathetic. Then they asked why don't I just settle up the outstanding balance now and then we can sort out the billing issue later. For the first time in this ordeal I lost my cool and flatly told them to go fuck themselves. Several calls later it was finally resolved, but this entire experience was astounding. There was nobody qualified to escalate to. I was completely at the mercy of the random humans the system picked for me to interact with, and there were seemingly zero knobs I could turn or buttons to push to summon someone who could actually assist. To their credit, many of the support staff seemed just as frustrated as I was, but were equally hamstrung by the system they were interacting with.
Nextgrid 1y ago
This doesn’t work for technical people, but it works for the other 90% of people who’d rather call and waste not only support’s time, but their own time even if their problem can be resolved by common sense or the first page of the knowledge base. Companies need to offer an “advanced support” option - a separate number with big scary warnings where every call whose resolution is due to your own fault or something findable on the docs ends up charging the user a fee. In exchange, it directly bypasses all chatbots and first-line support. I’ve never heard an argument why companies don’t do that, it seems like it would be a win-win for everyone to get the customers to self-triage before reaching out.
- mandevil 1y ago
  Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/806/ https://xkcd.com/806/
  - echelon_musk 1y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7984350 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7984350
    - Nextgrid 1y ago
      Yep, very much aware of them and a happy customer! In fact you don’t even need to say “shibboleet” - I don’t think they even have anyone on payroll that doesn’t know at least 2 programming languages.
  - Lerc 1y ago
    I had an experience like this in a real-life non technical situation. Walking down the street I receive a text to say my glasses were ready to be picked up. I had not purchased any glasses, and the store that I was to collect them from was not in the city I live in. By coincidence I was approximately 30 meters from a branch of the same store in my town. I popped in to tell them that someone had entered a phone number incorrectly and someone might need to told by other means that their glasses were ready. The response? "Certainly sir, can I have your name, and address". Explaining how this information was not relevant was not fruitful. I was reluctant to provide this information because about the only thing they could have done with it was to add it to the account that matched the phone number. I wasn't in the mood to engage in identity theft for a free pair of glassees, but the conversation was going in circles. Eventually another staff member observed the rising tension and offered to take care of this difficult situation. She took my phone number, and the address of the branch that had sent the text, said thank you for the notification and she would sort it out with the other branch. I was out of the store within 30 seconds of her taking over.

libraryatnight 1y ago

Sometimes there will be a loop that's tough to break out of where the "Contact us" tells you to talk to a chat bot before putting in a ticket or showing you a phone number, and the bot won't be able to help but will spit you out to the page that tells you to talk to the chat bot rather than give you info for actual support until you find the special event chain that leads it to let you talk to people, or attempt to.

nunez 1y ago
Basically Uber support these days. Except theirs uses an LLM which gives you an even more useless layer of pretending to help.

GuinansEyebrows 1y ago

xfinity is absolutely lousy for this. at least with a human representative, i can let them know right out of the gate that, yes, i've power cycled my CPE, and yes, i've bypassed my own network to confirm the problem is not with my equipment. every single time i've had to go through this dance, they acknowledge that the problem is on their end and can fix it right away or put in a work order. every time i've had to interact with a chatbot, it wastes 15 minutes of my time before directing me to call (and deal with an audio chatbot until i convince it to let me talk to a person).

thierrydamiba 1y ago
Why should Xfinity make any changes if you still send them money every month?
- Nextgrid 1y ago
  This is downvoted for some reason and yet it’s absolutely correct. There’s a reason telcos specifically are notorious for the shittiest customer service ever - because major telcos typically have a monopoly and/or long-term contracts the customer can’t easily leave. They could literally bill you and not provide any service, and most people would still pay at least a couple months while fighting to cancel or get it resolved to avoid getting their credit report dinged.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
  i'll try to assume this isn't a snarky response! but it kinda sounds like it. unfortunately, there are no "good" ISPs in my area. xfinity and the other big ones killed most of the competition via undercutting, lobbying and the legal system (ie, tying up municipal fiber/wifi initiatives in bureaucratic hell). since i no longer work from home, it's mostly just a convenience to have internet service for personal use. i actually use it very little, and pay for the cheapest option available, so it's not much money.
  - thierrydamiba 1y ago
    No snark, I just don’t see why Xfinity would have any motivation to change their process if it doesn’t have an impact on the bottom line.
    - GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
      ah well, we're dealing with economies of scale far greater than individual subscribers. and trust me, i've weighed going offline-only at home (not including mobile data), but for what relatively-little i do pay, i'm not ready to unplug just yet.
mmh0000 1y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMcny_pixDw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMcny_pixDw
kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
I needed to cancel cable service recently. I lied about moving to another state to minimize the upsell and retention BS in their script but they still tried so desperately. After a human rep hung up on me, I threatened to sue when dealing with their interactive voice responder. That got me back to a human immediately.
stouset 1y ago
I moved states, and changed my service to the new address. They started billing me for both addresses for several months. Several calls and many, many hours later, I was finally able to get the double-billing resolved. But they didn't remove the charges that had accrued. Several calls later I was able to get someone who assured me they could deal with the issue. I demanded a $50 statement credit as compensation for my time. They flipped the sign on the statement credit, and it was an additional $50 charge. I got called by their collections department. I patiently explained the issue, and they were very sympathetic. Then they asked why don't I just settle up the outstanding balance now and then we can sort out the billing issue later. For the first time in this ordeal I lost my cool and flatly told them to go fuck themselves. Several calls later it was finally resolved, but this entire experience was astounding. There was nobody qualified to escalate to. I was completely at the mercy of the random humans the system picked for me to interact with, and there were seemingly zero knobs I could turn or buttons to push to summon someone who could actually assist. To their credit, many of the support staff seemed just as frustrated as I was, but were equally hamstrung by the system they were interacting with.

Nextgrid 1y ago

This doesn’t work for technical people, but it works for the other 90% of people who’d rather call and waste not only support’s time, but their own time even if their problem can be resolved by common sense or the first page of the knowledge base. Companies need to offer an “advanced support” option - a separate number with big scary warnings where every call whose resolution is due to your own fault or something findable on the docs ends up charging the user a fee. In exchange, it directly bypasses all chatbots and first-line support. I’ve never heard an argument why companies don’t do that, it seems like it would be a win-win for everyone to get the customers to self-triage before reaching out.

mandevil 1y ago
Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/806/ https://xkcd.com/806/
- echelon_musk 1y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7984350 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7984350
  - Nextgrid 1y ago
    Yep, very much aware of them and a happy customer! In fact you don’t even need to say “shibboleet” - I don’t think they even have anyone on payroll that doesn’t know at least 2 programming languages.
- Lerc 1y ago
  I had an experience like this in a real-life non technical situation. Walking down the street I receive a text to say my glasses were ready to be picked up. I had not purchased any glasses, and the store that I was to collect them from was not in the city I live in. By coincidence I was approximately 30 meters from a branch of the same store in my town. I popped in to tell them that someone had entered a phone number incorrectly and someone might need to told by other means that their glasses were ready. The response? "Certainly sir, can I have your name, and address". Explaining how this information was not relevant was not fruitful. I was reluctant to provide this information because about the only thing they could have done with it was to add it to the account that matched the phone number. I wasn't in the mood to engage in identity theft for a free pair of glassees, but the conversation was going in circles. Eventually another staff member observed the rising tension and offered to take care of this difficult situation. She took my phone number, and the address of the branch that had sent the text, said thank you for the notification and she would sort it out with the other branch. I was out of the store within 30 seconds of her taking over.