The Good, The Bad & The Ugly About Chat Bots
Lately, I have experienced multiple unpleasant customer service incidents, and it has made me realize the effectiveness and shortcomings of chat bots more than ever before.
As someone working in a career that centers around human interaction and transitioning to another similar field, I am apprehensive about the prospect that robots are currently capable of performing the tasks that I am aiming to do.
Personally, I firmly believe that robots and artificial intelligence will never be able to replicate the human quality of empathy, which is crucial in this line of work.
“Not employing humans to deal with these complicated customer service issues will leave customers frustrated and not eager to do business with them.
Good Chat Bot!
Let me start out by telling you a successful chat bot story. I recently renewed my insurance.
The leasing office at my apartment sends a threatening email every day for an entire week around the time of renewal that if you don’t have an active renters policy on file, they’ll boot you even if you have upped your lease and have always paid your rent on time.
The issue is that the renter’s policy always falls on the exact day that the lease starts because that’s when it was enacted.
So, in previous years, a week before my lease is set to renew I’d contact the insurance company for a copy of my new policy, which of course was NEVER ready that far in advance and they would tell me to wait, straddling the icy fence, until the day after my current policy expired.
This year, however, this year they got it right. I went on my insurance website on the last active day of my policy and get this, a chat bot helped me download my new policy and send it straight from the site to my leasing office.
I was so burned by having to wait until the eleventh hour in past years that I didn’t even notice the new policy was already in my policy documents. I read the dates wrong and thought it was still last year’s. Overall this saved me time, frustration on the phone, and ultimately my sanity in a time that was already stressful.
Bad Chat Bot!
Now let me tell you about two times I used a chat bot that wasn’t as nice as my previous account.
I finally found a bathing suit I love and that fits me well. Every single time I’ve had to contact this company about sizing, shipment, or exchange, the little chat bot pops up on their e-commerce site.
The problem with having a chat bot and not employing many customer service agents is that often the chat bot is useless. It often seems like a medium to buy the company time for you to submit a query and for them to respond days later. The Chat bot generally solves nothing with the added bonus of terrible UX.
I’ve never had a chat bot interaction with this site that took more than a few days to receive a response…over email. I can email a company regarding why the site prompted me first to use the chat bot. This solution isn’t scalable.
As this company grows, and it will because its products are well made, so will the complication of their complaints and order issues. Not employing humans to deal with these complicated customer service issues will leave customers frustrated and not eager to do business with them.
It’s the facade that the chat bot replaces a 24/7 solution to solve issues but really it’s no faster than just communicating over email with an actual Customer Service Rep (CSR) during normal business hours.
Okay, I'm getting to my point!
I recently hired a Conversational Designer for a large healthcare company with a chat bot in place for 3 years. Their problems were twofold:
- First, conversational flows were never designed so the chat bot will go from being warm and friendly to sounding like a lawyer.
- Second, the managers wanted to optimize the functionality of this chat bot and allow it to do more than just the basics like my experience with the insurance company above.
But, the main difference is that this company still employs a robust human CSR team.
Healthcare is highly regulated and there are some things within health insurance that should be handled by a chat bot and other issues where human interaction and attention is vital. Their aim was also to improve the redundancies and flows on the transition from the chat bot to the live agent.
Have you ever had to repeat the exact thing you typed into the chat bot again to the live agent who ultimately takes over because your problem is too complicated? I can’t even begin to count how many times I’ve been in this scenario. I also imagine the stress and frustration my parents feel utilizing the same technology.
“Why aren’t chat logs automatically transferred from the Chat bot conversation to the CSR conversation?”
This company is molding to the speed of technology and really paying attention to what their customers need by improving the optimization of the current chat bot and improving the connection from chat bot to live agent. Plus, I was able to hire a really great human who was a delight to work with during the hiring process.
My Final 0.02c
If you come from a copy writing or English background, and have some design experience like a UX/UI Boot Camp (I'M TALKING TO ALL YOU ENGLISH TEACHERS OUT THERE THAT TOOK BOOT CAMPS DURING THE PANDEMIC), run, don’t walk, to every resource you can find on conversational design.
Companies who are embracing their chat bot’s faults and actively improving their conversational flows are going to end up with happier customers at the end of the day.