Chatbots: Almost Universally Bad.

Conversational user interfaces (CUIs) are big right now—right at the top of the “hype cycle”—and you can’t move around the web without seeing the “Chat now” bubble in the corner of everything from banking and insurance apps through to online stores like Amazon and Apple.

CUIs are not in themselves a bad thing—they’re focused, simple, and widely understood by users. The problem is: what’s on the other end? Who is your user talking to?

Some of my best user experiences as a customer have come from using online chat - with another human: telling Amazon about a faulty product and getting an instant refund, or telling the electricity people that I need a new smart meter in a matter of minutes.

Do you want to know what some of my worst user experiences have been?

Chatbots.

The key problem with chatbots is this: the AI or language processing on the other end just isn’t good enough to deal with my requests properly. Chatbots take the one good thing from the interaction—the human assistant—and throw it away, leaving you with a web-based equivalent of the awful “press 1 for customer support” phone systems.

So instead, treat your user to a real customer service person—letting them know how long it will be before they get a response (or what queue position they’re at), and show an indicator when the other person is typing. You’ll free up phone lines in your call center and end up with some very happy users.

Learning points

• If you’re going to use chat, have a human on the other end
• Give users a realistic wait time for them to get attention
• Let users know that someone is typing

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