[mduggles]

Typically chatbots that I interact with are just attempting to steer me back towards FAQs. I don’t need a different interface to search your documentation in an attempt to keep me on the cheap customer service path and away from the expensive customer service path.

Which isn’t to say they can’t be helpful. I’d much rather chat with a bot than call a person, if the bot is capable of doing the things I need. The thing is nobody seems willing to let the system actually do anything except escalate to a person, so why bother?

[ye-olde-sysrq]

Yeah this is my take too. Chat bots are usually transparently obviously something the CTO bought, then Support dumped some basic configuration into it, and now it's a glorified redirect-provider to poorly map english questions to help articles. There's 0 vertical integration and it's purely to try to shunt traffic down cheaper support channels.

I've literally had 1 good experience with bot-based support. Exactly one. It was when I forgot I had used my Lowes' store card that month and they charged me a late fee for missing a payment. I went through the chatbot UI because I couldn't figure out how to even begin to contact human support.

And can you imagine my utter shock and disbelief when the bot offered to waive the late fee if I set up autopay? Holy shit! I'm still in awe. The chatbot waived my fee. It actually DID something. It genuinely saved them and me a support call that day instead of just feeling like they were trying to persuade me to give up by throwing friction into the process of getting to someone who could actually waive my fee.

[xur17]

I agree. In my head I group chatbots into: 1. bot that can regurgitate the faqs 2. bot that can perform actions

I've had good experiences with type 2 bots with Amazon, Uber, and Doordash, refunding orders that weren't delivered, etc. I assume they have a budget for refunds based on your purchase and refund volume, very similar to the agency a normal customer service agent would have.

[fakedang]

> very similar to the agency a normal customer service agent would have.

Exactly this is the differentiating factor. Even if you have a human on the other side, if they don't have the agency accorded to them to perform a particular action within given bounds, they are no good compared to a Chatbot. A chatbot will help such companies cut costs, but they'll also reduce the CX - but I doubt those companies give a damn about that.

[kaibee]

> And can you imagine my utter shock and disbelief when the bot offered to waive the late fee if I set up autopay? Holy shit! I'm still in awe. The chatbot waived my fee. It actually DID something. It genuinely saved them and me a support call that day instead of just feeling like they were trying to persuade me to give up by throwing friction into the process of getting to someone who could actually waive my fee.

I think I had a similar experience with the Amazon customer support bot just yesterday. It authorized a refund on a $20 item that I said arrived damaged.

[stnmtn]

That is incredibly impressive. To people who are not technical, I wonder if this is impressive to them.

[JshWright]

> The thing is nobody seems willing to let the system actually do anything except escalate to a person, so why bother?

Because you are not the target user for the bot. For every user that proactively reads the FAQs, there's 10 more that don't and would happily open a support ticket to have someone copy/paste the FAQ answer to them. The bot is to there deflect those cases.

[pessimizer]

I don't think this is true, because if it were true, people would want chatbots. The last thing most people want to do is to call or open a chat with customer service, and they've usually looked through everything they can find to avoid it.

One of the reasons some chatbots, like at Amazon, could be useful is because their FAQs are impossible to find.

[JshWright]

"People" aren't the ones deploying chatbots, companies are, because they successfully deflect cases.

If you think most people have done everything to avoid reaching out to support, I can only imagine you haven't worked in a "Tier 1" support role.

[RamenJunkie_]

Support Chat: "Thank you for asking about [question], here is a [link to FAQ Page!"

The FAQ Page: "Was this article helpful? If not, contact our support chat!"

Endlessly. It's so stupid.

[dopidopHN]

That the key point for me. If the chatbot can’t act on the system for me beside « get me human », it’s useless.

I like them when : - it can schedule a call back with a human - it can open ticket, ask for document on my side and make it faster for my query to process overall.

[benj111]

I had a savings account where the interface was basically a chat bot.

It was basically guess the verb. And also not obvious when you're talking to a human through the exact same interface.

It's a menu system but harder to use.

[dontworryabout]

Wow! “Guess the verb.” That is exactly how text based adventure games worked in 80s. The interface of the future is Zork.

[seanhunter]

Omg the number of times I went into a mental meltdown with text adventures over that.

I finally have the thing I need

I am in the right place to use the thing such that it will fix whatever problem so I can move onwards

How hard can it be to figure out how to ask the game to use the thing to fulfil its purpose?

Quite fucking hard, it turns out. Quite fucking hard.

[jafo1989]

Infocom had a 80s text adventure game called Bureaucracy[1] that captures this modern scenario exactly.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy_(video_game)

[pmontra]

In those years my English was quite basic. I abandoned an adventure in a mine in front of an elevator door because open and every other verb I could think about didn't work. Very frustrating but I lived on and forgot about it. A few years ago I found a walkthrough on some retrogames site. I checked that location and... slide!

[vsnf]

EverQuest did the same thing, except it was "guess the noun".

> What broach?

> What sword?

The keywords could be so obscure that allegedly, 25 years after release, some quests remain uncompleted by even a single player.

[auggierose]

I recently had a chat with the Amazon bot for a refund of something that had not been delivered. That went very well!

[sgt101]

I had the same, it refunded me, then 3 weeks later I got a notification from Amazon that they would be taking the money off me.

I complained and was ignored. It was only $10 but it teaches a lesson.

[ithkuil]

I'm very surprised. My experience with Amazon refunds and in general customer support is that they care more about upsetting a customer than fighting for pesky 10 bucks.

Could it be that their behaviour is different depending on who is the customer, i.e. what is the customers yearly spend?

I shop frequently on Amazon. Last year I sent a gift to my nephew how was living in a dorm at the University. The gift was a comouter monitor about $500 worth. The package disappeared soon after it got signed by someone that was at the front desk and never made it to my nephew.

I was already getting ready for a long discussion but Amazon said they will handle it and my nephew got another monitor two days after.

I also routinely return stuff I buy by mistake and I honestly report I just bought it by mistake

[blagie]

So was I, the first few times this happened.

My experience is that Amazon customer service did a complete 180 in 2020. Prior to that, every issue was resolved to my satisfaction, and they felt too generous, if anything.

Today, every Amazon rep I speak to isn't even empowered to resolve the most basic issues, and sounds like they hold their employer in complete contempt. Which is to say, they follow the scripts and /try/ to sound friendly, but it's clear they hate their employer, and want to satisfice their KPIs to keep their job, but all else being equal, would prefer for Amazon to die.

This also corresponds to a huge increase in problem rates. Prior to 2020, problems with Amazon were rare. Today, it seems like screwups happen all the time. I don't think they show up on any KPIs, though, as from Amazon's perspective, if a customer service rep e.g. satisficied and pretended to issue a refund without actually issuing one, or a customer gave up on resolving an issue, they have no visibility into the issue.

A basic, obvious issue like a missing package or a return will get handled, but anything more complex is now a black hole.

[JAlexoid]

I can't say I had a bad experience with my Amazon interactions.

I have 3 free UPS's, that were wrong and Amazon just refunded me without requesting a return.

And I even had a hard drive go back, because of degraded performance - but it did require some extra troubleshooting on the phone.

Granted, I live in a rural area and I spend a lot on Amazon with Prime - from cleaning supplies and food to furniture and tech.

[rationalist]

> UPS's, that were wrong and Amazon just refunded me without requesting a return.

That's because they contain batteries that Amazon will not accept.

[tanjtanjtanj]

In 2018 I ordered something from Amazon and it got marked as delivered but didn't make its way to me. Amazon sent a replacement AND refunded me for the item.

In 2022 I ordered an item of similar size and cost and it was marked as delivered along with a photo of a house I could not recognize at all. When I asked Amazon to look into it I got the corporate flow-chart equivalent of "Oh haha, that sucks". I asked for it to be escalated and they more or less said that the order already has the "oh haha, that sucks" flag on it and can't be changed.

[LorenPechtel]

Yeah, their delivery accuracy has dropped. Since the great yuck I have had at least one delivery a year next door (easily retrieved) and one I completely didn't recognize.

[JohnFen]

> I'm very surprised. My experience with Amazon refunds and in general customer support is that they care more about upsetting a customer than fighting for pesky 10 bucks.

I'm not surprised at all. There have only been two times when I needed to return an item I got from Amazon, and both times Amazon stiffed me. One of those items was for around $10.

Amazon seems to care about petty dollar amounts more than avoiding upset customers.

[scarface_74]

Two weeks before leaving home for six months, I bought two suitcases. They were delayed/lost and Amazon suggested I reorder.

I reordered and they still were going to be delayed until the day after we left.

I went to a local store and bought one.

I started a chat and told them that even if the suitcases did arrive that evening, I wouldn’t be able to send them back for a refund.

They said keep all of the suitcases and I would still get my refund.

They did come later that evening.

[AlexandrB]

The stuff Amazon gets away with is incredible. Imagine if you returned a product to WalMart and they decided to charge you for it anyways 3 weeks later.

[skywhopper]

It’s always been possible to get refunds from Amazon without contacting a human, through a very simple form. I haven’t used their chatbot, but I’m curious how it’s better than the old form.

[cfn]

Some forms were replaced with bots. For me is the "Request invoice from vendor". I used to have a canned email I would copy paste into their contact form but now I have to answer a few questions the bot does so it is three or four copy/pastes instead of one. Just an annoyance but still, not progress.

[manicennui]

This is my experience as well. Almost anything that the chatbots do competently shouldn't require more than a form on their site with a few questions and often did in the past.

[tetha]

I like the vision our chatbot team at work has there. They want their bot to have 2, maybe three tasks. First, it's supposed to be a neater way of presenting that initial phone choice of "Press 1 if you have an internet issue. Press 2 if you have a telephone issue". It's easier for some people to say "My phone is dead and has no free tone when picked up" and have the system recognize this as a phone issue. And second, it's supposed to make the collection of necessary data about the call smoother - since when does the issue occur, which phone number is affected, what's your account number. Once it has those (or it gives up after 1-2 tries without progress) it hands over to an actual agent.

The value proposition there is that you save a few human employee minutes per support case.

[kayodelycaon]

Unfortunately, the majority of times I call customer service, none of this collected information gets transferred or they make me confirm everything again. It's extremely aggravating. For every company who gets this right, there are ten who don't.

Even if you do everything perfectly for every customer, I lump you in with the other ten because I think I got lucky rather than thinking you having a working system. :(

[JohnFen]

> Once it has those (or it gives up after 1-2 tries without progress) it hands over to an actual agent.

And that human will immediately ask you to repeat all of the information you just gave to the screening bot.

[malfist]

Save a few minutes of paying someone, piss off your paying customers

[okillbite]

It's actually more than a few minutes. I can't speak for other places, but generally there will be an agent that is monitoring many inbound chats, and in a lot of cases the resolution can likewise be automated.

In the past this was managed by a fairly deep call queue, and has saved fairly significant amount of $ vs receiving and resolving everything manually.

Indeed we have internal clients (vs paying customers) but overall this has been quite successful for us.

[tomjen3]

Its not a bad idea, but its like phone trees: abused by so many places the only thing I can do is try to get a human.

[LorenPechtel]

Yup. The chatbots are basically a friendly version of search, useful for the non-tech but anyone here will almost certainly not benefit.

You want to cut down your customer service costs, actually provide answers online! I would say at least 80% of what I call companies about are things that perfectly well could have been done online if their website actually allowed it.

[solardev]

I don't think they're meant to make end user lives easier, but to frustrate them into giving up.

[JohnFen]

Exactly, yes. I never use the chat support (whether robotic or manned) because if I'm at the point where that's necessary, I'm at the point where I need to talk to a human being personally.

[bigtex]

Let me walk you through the steps of restarting your modem....