I loathe the fact that chatbots have not only replaced a lot of human customer support, but that companies have made it almost IMPOSSIBLE to reach critical (human) customer support. It's a fucking travesty, and something companies should be shamed for.
For example - I'm currently having issues with an international shipment. It is unclear if the shipment ever left the country, if it's in limbo - hiding in some warehouse, or what. I went through this a couple of year ago, and back then, the shipping company had their phone numbers available. I got the problem fixed after 30 mins on the phone.
These days? There are no phone numbers to be found. No email. Only the chatbot, which does not yield the desired results.
I ended up searching my email inbox, and luckily found some contact person. Sent said person a mail, and luckily got a phone number and email to the correct department. I'm now awaiting a reply from them.
edit: I think it's fine to have a chatbot on the website, but not at the expense of all other methods.
> These days? There are no phone numbers to be found. No email. Only the chatbot, which does not yield the desired results.
Yep. A friend worked at a customer care automation company and apparently they got the best feedback when they limited the effort required to speak to a human. They literally had direct evidence suggesting that the fewer the steps to reach a human, the happier the customer.
The problem is, the <big names> wanted to use the service to reduce the number of humans in the call centre, not to improve the quality of the customer care. They were entirely motivated by reducing costs and therefore instructed the customer care automation company to make it as _difficult_ as possible to reach a human.
Tip: If you ever hear a robot voice on the phone, mash all the keys tonnes of times. They'll likely put you through to a human as a "confused customer".
> edit: I think it's fine to have a chatbot on the website, but not at the expense of all other methods.
Right. It should be an 'aid', not a replacement.
Also: TWITTER IS NOT CUSTOMER CARE. Only a _very small_ number of your customers use both Twitter and your platform. A large percentage of your hipster engineers are on Twitter - but they are in a bubble. Your grandparents are likely not Tweeting about their tech issues, they are the people stuck in a chat with a robot that forgets every 5 minutes what was being discussed.
An example of this is trying to reach Youtube. Why can humans at Youtube only be reached via Twitter? Why do you have to get a certain number of retweets before your issue is taken seriously? It's actually madness.
This is a great example of chatbots working as intended.
A human agent has no fucking idea where your package is either, and almost certainly there are processes in place to get it to its destination.
The only thing to do in such an instance is to bullshit the customer until the package eventually arrives and they leave you alone, and I can't think of a better way to achieve this at scale than with GPT-3.
For example - I'm currently having issues with an international shipment. It is unclear if the shipment ever left the country, if it's in limbo - hiding in some warehouse, or what. I went through this a couple of year ago, and back then, the shipping company had their phone numbers available. I got the problem fixed after 30 mins on the phone.
These days? There are no phone numbers to be found. No email. Only the chatbot, which does not yield the desired results.
I ended up searching my email inbox, and luckily found some contact person. Sent said person a mail, and luckily got a phone number and email to the correct department. I'm now awaiting a reply from them.
edit: I think it's fine to have a chatbot on the website, but not at the expense of all other methods.