The author argues that customers do not actually want chat bots for customer service, contrary to what companies claim. Chat bots can only handle simple, routine queries, but for complicated issues customers want to speak to a human representative. Companies are pushing chat bots to reduce costs and increase profits, without considering the negative impact on customer experience. The author only sees chat bots as useful for customers when used to cancel subscriptions that require contacting customer service, showing how frustrating the current system is. The author believes we should build technology that customers actually want and would appreciate, rather than focusing on bad experiences or defending against them.
I can see it somewhat working once those transition to using ChatGPT-like models trained on every bit of documentation available, but as of now most of them are only able to answer really basic questions and sometimes even ask you to answer very specific keywords. Those are annoying as hell.
At least ChatGPT is capable of actually helping you. It’s been a good companion to navigate AWS, you can usually just ask it how to do it and it’ll even spit out some CloudFormation configs for you. My ISP’s chatbot though? Can barely tell me to unplug or replug my modem until it gives up and transfers me to an agent.