5 ms·

I am an engineer at a profitable chatbot company (HelloTars). I can't entirely agree with the points mentioned in this article. Yes, a chatbot is not ready to

by febin 6y ago

I am an engineer at a profitable chatbot company (HelloTars). I can't entirely agree with the points mentioned in this article. Yes, a chatbot is not ready to replace human support. However, there are other areas where they show good results. We have been helping customers with lead generation chatbots for the last four years. What we have learnt is customers would instead engage with a chatbot than filling up lengthy forms. Because chatbot nudges users to give information. Also in websites where you have a lot of information to convey, ex: banks, mortgages, etc. again chatbot makes sense. Because it helps give information that's selective to the customer. And they don't have to struggle through a lot of information presented to them at once. We have customers who use our chatbot link directly on google ads. We have also noticed our customers maturing over time and demanding more functionalities on the chatbots. To summarize, no chatbots are not dead. They are only beginning. However, you need to narrow down on a specific problem and solve it.

zeepzeep 6y ago
> To summarize, no chatbots are not dead. They are only beginning. Yes, there will likely be more chatbots in the future. And yes, THEN they will be usable. But no, it's not a good user experience yet. If a website needs a chatbot they: - Didn't put enough effort in organizing the website - Don't want to spend money on real support - Hate their customers
- gk1 6y ago
  > - Don't want to spend money on real support Nothing wrong with this. You can say this about practically any company using software for anything. Not spending money on people is the point of enterprise software.
- PeterisP 6y ago
  The thing is, if you look at the stats for questions of real support, the vast majority of those questions are things that did not ever need "real support" - no matter how much or little support you're offering, half or more of the questions they get can be answered even by a "bot" that simply enters your query in a search engine and returns the first answer. So there is always the temptation to save costs of your support with a pre-filter, so that your support can talk to people who actually have a question or problem that needs to be talked about. It's the equivalent of "have you tried turning it off and on again?". This question must be asked, because it actually resolves a substantial portion of the issues - but it does seem quite wasteful to employ people to whom 30% of the calls ends with asking that question. Or, for other scenarios, reading verbatim one of the top answers from your FAQ page.
_the_inflator 6y ago
> chatbots are not dead Yep, I agree. However, even in the wake of GTP-3, maybe it is time to abandon the term Chatbot. Essentially "chatbots" are a tool to deal with unstructured data/content. At least this is how I see them: a better search interface.

by febin 6y ago

zeepzeep 6y ago

> To summarize, no chatbots are not dead. They are only beginning. Yes, there will likely be more chatbots in the future. And yes, THEN they will be usable. But no, it's not a good user experience yet. If a website needs a chatbot they: - Didn't put enough effort in organizing the website - Don't want to spend money on real support - Hate their customers

gk1 6y ago
> - Don't want to spend money on real support Nothing wrong with this. You can say this about practically any company using software for anything. Not spending money on people is the point of enterprise software.
PeterisP 6y ago
The thing is, if you look at the stats for questions of real support, the vast majority of those questions are things that did not ever need "real support" - no matter how much or little support you're offering, half or more of the questions they get can be answered even by a "bot" that simply enters your query in a search engine and returns the first answer. So there is always the temptation to save costs of your support with a pre-filter, so that your support can talk to people who actually have a question or problem that needs to be talked about. It's the equivalent of "have you tried turning it off and on again?". This question must be asked, because it actually resolves a substantial portion of the issues - but it does seem quite wasteful to employ people to whom 30% of the calls ends with asking that question. Or, for other scenarios, reading verbatim one of the top answers from your FAQ page.

_the_inflator 6y ago

> chatbots are not dead Yep, I agree. However, even in the wake of GTP-3, maybe it is time to abandon the term Chatbot. Essentially "chatbots" are a tool to deal with unstructured data/content. At least this is how I see them: a better search interface.