OT: HelpBots and FAQs

May 22, 2024 Last reply: 2 years ago 4 Replies

AFAIK, all online customer service sites these days push you to divert your questions to their chatbot/virtual assistant. I tried a few of these, but gave up on them when it became obvious that they're about as useful as the FAQ pages that they replaced -- as in "of absolutely no use at all".



It raises my blood pressure when a prominent, and non-dismissable, "Why not use our Virtual Assistant" box pops up and inevitably obscures the part of the site I'm trying to look at.



While I fully understand that the point of these things is to get you to bugger off and stop bothering them, it set me to wondering: has anybody, anywhere ever got useful advice from a FAQ list, or from a helpbot/assistant?


With many of them if you keep saying NO to the ‘Was this helpful?’ they will eventually put you in touch with a human

Or keep typing "agent" has worked for me, takes time :-(

In my (limited) experience, if your question was so simple the chatbot could resolve it, you wouldn't have needed any help in the first place.

They do seem to imagine that customers are lining up to ask things like "How can I spend even more money on your services?"

Most of the ones I see do have a "close this box" button.

Yep

Yep

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