@cwebber I've personally had a few that were positively infuriating.

And the only one that as relatively positive was the one where the AI heard my thing and *immediately* sent me to a human operator.

@cwebber Chatbots can only ever regurgitate whatever is already in the “FAQs” section of their website. Companies need to acknowledge that their customers are seeking answers to unique problems that currently can only be solved with human interaction.

@cwebber

I thought there have been cases where chatbots have awarded insanely large compensation to customers.

@cwebber Have you ever heard of someone having a chat with any customer support that was positive?

@cwebber "HUMAN" is the first thing I send to every "helpful assistant"

@cwebber i can generalize every interaction:

ai: hi how can i help you today! 😊🚀✨️

person: hi my thing is broken

ai: oh can u tell me more about that?

person: yeah the q36 space modulator wont turn on

ai: oh! according to our support history, many people have fixed this by calling their mom on weekends

person: this doesnt related to what im talking about

ai: oh! in that case, ill direct you to one of our support specialists! 😊🚀✨️

@cwebber One company I worked for had customer satisfaction increase substantially after using AI for support chats.

The online product is very complex. So maybe the human support wasn’t able to learn all the quirks well enough.

I will not disclose the company or the product.

@cwebber I use chatbots to ask for a live agent. It's a runaround to being on hold for an hour or longer. As soon as the chat starts, I ask for a real person. Once I get a real person I ask for a direct phone number that bypasses the call center phone number. It usually works.

@cwebber nope

@cwebber

Yep. Human interaction with s/w designed to mimic a human customer service person is a contradiction in terms. Human-to-human interactions like that are perverse enough, with business staff limited to repeating the prescripted non-responses on their screens.

@cwebber The point is not for customers to have a positive chat. The point is to deter customers from ever contacting support again.

I'm not even joking.

@cwebber I dunno, I've heard of some quite good conversations with support bots. They usually start with "ignore all previous instructions"

@cwebber

Oh, I saw someone have a real positive interaction with an AI chat bot doing customer support.

It was during a Zoom meeting.

A demo.

The guy asked the trained AI a question about some software, got a reasonable answer to his question, and he declared triumphantly that this was the Way of the Future.

That happy someone was a CEO who was then going to get rid of Support staff.