[dmje]

Chat is one thing. Obtrusive chat is another. Bot chat is a sort of pinnacle of shitness that eclipses all others.

When companies do chat and it actually helps the user, all good. When it's done entirely to help the company by reducing salaries for real staff / trying to prevent users getting in touch / promoting some feature or product the user didn't want in the first place... - then it's generally all bad.

[yummypaint]

Spectrum (the ISP) had terrible incompetent bots attempting to pose as humans last time i was forced to deal with them. They were even trained to claim they were human, but couldn't answer questions any person trivially knows the answer to. It's a true insult to the intelligence and time of their (unwilling) customers. The purpose is to waste peoples's time and grind them down in hopes they give up before even entering the phone tree.