The author argues that customers do not actually want chat bots for customer service, contrary to what companies claim. Chat bots can only handle simple, routine queries, but for complicated issues customers want to speak to a human representative. Companies are pushing chat bots to reduce costs and increase profits, without considering the negative impact on customer experience. The author only sees chat bots as useful for customers when used to cancel subscriptions that require contacting customer service, showing how frustrating the current system is. The author believes we should build technology that customers actually want and would appreciate, rather than focusing on bad experiences or defending against them.
I agree that I absolutely do not want a chat bot and that getting in touch with a human who knows what theyre doing is more important.
That said I’ve also worked a job where I manned the little chat box on a website by myself and I was consecutively talking to like 13 people at the same time for 8 hours. It was not fun, and while I did what I could to help people there were times I wasnt as fast to respond and that I didnt give people as much help as I could. There were also times when the the question was super simple and it saved the customer time on hold for nothing.
I’ve also seen chat windows on websites that are pushed out to underpaid overworked people in third world countries where they are so stuck to the script that it might as well be a robot. Overall I think chat windows on websites for anything serious arent great, human or otherwise, though they should be better. In some cases the bots may improve experience, but I dont like that it’ll just lead to cutting their customer service crew further.
I’ve done chat at my internal IT job, and I’ve been talking to 5 people troubleshooting, with me remoted into 2 of there computers and it is insane