[10-6]

"Your chatbot should be purposeful, reflective of your product’s voice, and simpatico with your users. One helpful design exercise is to produce an assistant persona and personality:"

For a business, a "chatbot" or any feature similar to it needs to do one thing and that is solve the users problem(s). If the user wants to do X within the app or learn about Y, the chatbot needs to help the user with that efficiently and better than a human can for the feature to be successful. The "chatbot having a personality" comes second to "solve the users problem."

If the users are completely happy with whatever chatbot they are using, then sure adding in some "personality" might be a good idea and increase engagement slightly, but a poorly-performing chatbot that can't help the user but has a personality isn't going to help the business at all.

[nerdponx]

I don't know any users that are ever happy with any chatbot. The only exceptions I can think of are Apple Siri and Amazon Alexa, that's only because they respond to your voice and save you the trouble of typing or clicking, not because they have any intrinsic value as chatbots.

[losteric]

I've often found that Alexa doesn't even save me that trouble. It's useful for the useless things that I wouldn't do manually. The things that took a lot of time take even longer with Alexa (if they're supported at all), and the small things ... great, changing the lights now takes 3 seconds instead of 5 seconds, so I do it twice as often.

Voice is just a medium, what I really want is more powerful abstractions. Do more with fewer interactions.

I don't want to ask Alexa what movies are playing nearby, that's as good as the 1985 moviefone service. I want to know whether there are movies worth watching, and have Alexa check movies/times/ratings/weather/traffic/my calendar and tell me "Yes - X is certified Fresh and <friend> recommended it on Twitter recently. It's playing at Y theater for $Z, you can walk there in time for the 8:00PM show. Would you like me to buy a ticket?"... I don't want to buy an HDMI cable from Amazon, I want a sample of physical/digital retailers with prices/ETAs/ratings...

Voice, GUI, heck even CLI is fine.

And when it comes to smart homes, I expect learning and proactivity. If I follow GSW, don't make me ask if they're playing, then ask to turn on the TV, then change the channels, then adjust the volume... learn that I care, ask if I care now, and get the game on ASAP if the answer is "yes".

[10-6]

I agree, a lot of chatbot projects seem to be built because of the hype + the team also gets to dabble with some "AI/ML." I think there are very few conversational agents or chatbots today that people use regularly, and of those I honestly don't think many people enjoy using them.

[crooked-v]

I'd much rather have a plain old index of help questions and answers than a chatbot to deal with.

[jkestelyn]

Building bots is hard: there are few tools available of any sophistication, leading to a vicious cycle of trial and error (with users getting the worst of it).

Remember what the first websites looked like? Everyone was just making it up as they went along. We're in a similar situation today.

[nerdponx]

And you know what? Some people are pining for those sites nowadays. The fact that you can write rich, computation-heavy applications and serve them over HTTP in a browser is amazing, but that doesn't mean every website needs to be a rich, computation-heavy application.

Same with chatbots. They might have some valid use somewhere, but most of the ones I have seen so far are just there for the sake of being there.

[jkestelyn]

Sure, but past performance is not a predictor of future results. Just because many of them are built poorly today doesn't mean they have to be built that way.

[bamnet]

Users are never happy with chatbots, but they can be happy with chat experiences if they never realize there's a bot behind the scenes.

[bpicolo]

Which, up to this point, is still never. Young kids can probably be happy with chat bots though?

[huthwr78]

Agreed. The virtual equivalent of a Radioshack employee isn't the way.

[CobrastanJorji]

That's a sick burn but I think it needs updating now that there isn't such a thing.

[SomeStupidPoint]

One could even argue what was so enraging about Clippy (and MS's recent foray into helpbots instead of actual support) was the personality-sans-utility.

No, I don't want to forcibly converse with a brick wall that clearly doesn't understand my question and is chipperly excited about that fact, fuck you.

So I went from loving my latest Windows 10 PC (-- second in a row that had been awesome, even!) to swearing off MS for years (again) in about 30 minutes of completely terrible bot-based customer support.

I sincerely hope that strategy works for them, and they're gaining income somewhere to offset what they've lost from me.

I don't think it will.