Subscribe
Sign in
What's the one thing you dislike about chatbots?
For me, it's the generic answers. If I'm using online chat on my University's Library page it gives me extremely generic answers which don't lead anywhere or help with the problem.
41
Replies
Best
@artkhromov food delivery apps using chatbots is where I've faced this issue the most. You literally have to explain an issue multiple times. Even the customer support agent behind the bot keeps switching and you have to explain the issue to a new agent all over again.
@krupa_bhagat agree, and it's hard to tell whether they're humans themselves or another, fancier bots (support agents)
@krupa_bhagat Chatbots are great to enable content discovery ... Chatbots initiated automatically, later manned by people behind help move the conversation forward. But chatbots fail when the product is a experience one and the chatbot becomes an additional layer of impersonal interaction .. some top of mind thoughts!
@krupa_bhagat @srama79 Tottally agree. At current technology stage, best chatbots are the ones that are monitored and that a human takes over when the chatbot does not understands
I use an app to plan my wedding, and the bot keeps on sending me the same message every day, even if I disable it or answer that I don't need help, it comes back every time I log in. The bot automation spams the user experience and needs to be implemented carefully.
@cica_laure_mbappe How true...its a wedding, an experience. I wish there were more human interactions delivering these experiences. They might make it a bit more fun and help realize value, than these intrusive chatbots
@chnsydney Thanks for pinging me @chnsydney, this is an interesting conversation, looking forward to finding out what people don't like about chatbots :3
@bastien_botella1 @chnsydney Hey! I've never found chatbots helpful if I'm trying to navigate through a site to find specific content. The chatbots that are monitored are still better as an actual person takes over at some point.
@chnsydney @krupa_bhagat Well to be honest, chatbots are like pretty much any other interfaces, they can be very useful in some situations, and absolutely useless in others. For instance, my company (Clevy.io) sells chatbots to large companies for internal use, these chatbots answer generic questions and people gain time because they don't need to search through endless faq to find informations abd get it from the chatbot 90% of the time. On the other hand there are a bunch of chabots we refuse to develop as we know they wouldn't be great and it'd be frustrating for the user down the line.
Also, while giving a personality to a chatbot is imo a good practice, it is quite a bad idea to get the chatbot to pretend it's a human, because it is not.
People tend to forget that chatbots exist for very specific use cases and are not meant to replace websites, they're just an other interface that sometimes is suitable to a usage, sometimes is not.
@chnsydney @bastien_botella1 Thanks for your response. I totally agree with you. Chatbots can be very useful in certain situations as you mentioned. I guess it also depends on how it has been made to function on different sites.
@chnsydney @krupa_bhagat @bastien_botella1 Great thoughts @bastien_botella1 .. Chatbots that make it easy to discover codified content serve a big value, in helping make discovery in complex site easier. I see chatbots as a panacea ... a way to answer all questions today, which we hope to change in the future...
Honestly, the generic nature of the chatbot is annoying. They should be more purpose-built, because I don't think the AI is really good enough yet for a generic solution that replaces a human.
@sashimiblade I couldn't agree more, we often tend to forget that technology is meant to serve a purpose rather than itself
It takes ages to get to what you need, I always look for a "hidden" option that says "talk to a real person"
@edita Even the 'talk to a real person' option takes forever. The standard response times on these chatbots are not quick enough to solve an end-users queries.
I have had the experience of working as a conversation designer for chatbots. It's quite interesting.
Not all chatbots offer generic answers, some are customized to the audiences & make for interesting conversations.
The thing I dislike about chatbots is beginning from the starting point. Once you are into a conversation it should understand the context.
@social_genietalk
the typical user experience of a chatbot is a popup, which is extremely annoying to say the list. More often than not I close the website with an intrusive chat bot functionality
@arko_ganguli1 Intrusive chatbots are the worst. They tend to be quite distracting if you are reading through some content.
When the option I need is "hidden" behind multiple replies. I like when I can simply type what I need and it gives me what I'm looking for.
When they are simple but still pretend to be a human. I'd rather just have it be obvious that it's a bot!
@akash_ambade1 I agree with you! A quick access to the support team is honestly the easiest way to solve a query.
@krupa_bhagat sometimes you have to repeat your request again and again without any results at the end. But they are fast, and it's a big plus 😎
I absolutely hate it when you ask it something twice and it replies with the exact same thing. For example if you say "how do I do xyz" and it replies with "have you tried abc", then you reply with the same thing about how to do xyz. It should have some basic pattern recognition to just say that it doesn't know. Otherwise it kills the whole experience.
Butler