I don’t like chatbots – seldom, if not never, did they help me and they provided awful customer experiences.

Most chatbots today don’t possess intelligence at all. They are more like a customized search engine. They don’t understand what customers need; they simply try their luck by presenting a list of possible canned answers.

Are they useful then? Well, it depends on the matrix. Asking different sets of questions will result in different conclusions. Also, the selected respondents play a role as well. I think chatbots have their place but overrated. They are most helpful to the customers who do not have the skill or habit to search information online. For the rest, not so much. In fact, it might work against the service provider. The key is to realize when to stop talking and hand over the conversation to a real person immediately.

When customers contact support, they usually have a problem to be solved. When it comes to problem-solving, most of the time it’s not a simple Q & A session. A problem needs to be understood and analyzed. A study conducted by MIT Review back in 2015 revealed that IQ of AI machines was equivalent to that of a four-year-old. They might be smarter today, but I am sure my six-year-old son will be way smarter than AI in many ways. Using chatbots is like employing a workforce of four-year-old (just for the sake of discussion, hopefully no legal problem involved here…). They could definitely help, but the limitation is obvious – they are only four after all. For problems beyond them, they have no clue. At that point, they should stop talking to customers anymore and advise customers should talk to a real person. The later this happens, the more furious the customers become when they spent a long time talking to a chatbot but didn’t get the solution eventually. Why do I know? Once I spent 25 minutes talking to Microsoft’s chatbot for a refund issue. The chatbot seemed to know what I was after and kept providing instructions. I followed the instructions and was advised I should call and speak to a staff after 25 minutes! I had similar experience with ATO’s chatbot as well. The awful experiences actually hurt the organization’s reputation.

I just had a chat with Red again. I asked a lot of questions ranging from current interest rates of home loan, the stock trading fees, the super investment options, etc. I did not get answers for many questions. Sometimes my questions were not understood. However, I was quite happy with Red’s response when it comes to things it doesn’t understand. It prompts at very early stage.

Some people predicted that chatbots might pass the Turing Test in 2029 – one can’t tell if he/she is interacting with a real person or a machine. Even if that happens, I might still prefer interacting with a real person just to save time - Though the chatbot behaves like a human, it’s likely to be a dump one. I always respond with “talk to human” whenever a chatbot greets me (including AskMe). In the foreseeable future, this will not change.