When AI-Driven Chatbots Really Work... And Proof We May Be at Peak AI Frenzy
Story time…
I despise chatbots for customer service, especially when you just know it would be better to talk to a live person...
You've likely been there yourself...
You open the chat box on a website, thinking maybe a real person will be on the other end. But then you wind up with something along the lines of: "Hi, I'm Veronica, a chatbot. What can I help you with today?"
That’s enough to drive anybody back to sitting on hold. After all, sometimes you have to wait as long as you would on a call for an agent. And then, even if a live person winds up being on the other end, they're usually juggling more than just you. The result is a painful delay in response... almost as if you're on dialup.
Enter my latest experience with SiriusXM satellite radio...
For years now I've been on an annual "promotional" plan, which is heavily discounted from the rack rate.
Since I'm on automatic renewal, the company always sends a letter reminding me that my subscription is about to renew, but at the full rate. Usually, I then give customer service a quick call, and play the same old game, with a quick haggle, resulting in pretty much a mildly tweaked version of the "promotional" deal I had the year before.
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I even tried it by chat last year – or maybe it was the year before – but it was painfully slow... and the person on the other side was either new or didn't know English very well.
So, here we are in the brave new post-ChatGPT world...
This time I got distracted after receiving the renewal notice and didn't call before the year was up. Then came my new bill, which was double what I had been paying...
I thought about calling, but since I was triple tasking, I might as well try the chatbot, thinking I would just keep on in the background.
Within a few seconds, the first thing it asked me was whether I was calling about my Platinum plan.
I typed, "Yes," and rolled my eyes when the bot came on and said, "Hi Herb. I'm Melody the SiriusXM Virtual Agent."
Then, just as I was about to click it off, the most remarkable thing happened... (You can read the rest for free by clicking here.)
Data Engineer / Software Engineer
1 å¹´Disclaimer: I work for SXM. I think I can say that internally, renewals were known to be a pain point for customers so it's cool to see that someone likes the experience. That said, for a CSR role, these things are already very scripted, so why not an AI? If you're going to go through all that song and dance to end up with this result, why not use automation. There's not that much "intelligence" involved in the exchange: someone at the cusp of a renewal is most likely looking for a discount and most of the intelligence goes into realizing that "yes", "y", "sure", "ok", a thumbs up emoji, and all the variations of stuff humans will respond with vs. "no", "something else", "&$^# u chatbot u suk".
0-1 product leader. Ex-Amazon, Microsoft and early-stage companies.
1 å¹´I wonder what the research is around naming a bot vs. just calling it a bot. Knowing that I'm talking to a fake Melody doesn't inspire me.
Senior Managing Director
1 å¹´Herb Greenberg Thank you for sharing this insightful post. I found it to be very informative and thought-provoking.