{"id":12747,"date":"2021-04-11T10:00:36","date_gmt":"2021-04-11T14:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vernai.com\/?p=12747"},"modified":"2021-04-11T10:00:36","modified_gmt":"2021-04-11T14:00:36","slug":"chatbot-or-anger-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/host.tucknologies.com\/~v3rn4dm1n\/2021\/04\/11\/chatbot-or-anger-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"Chatbot…or anger machine?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chatbot\u2026or anger machine?<\/h1>\n

 <\/p>\n

Customers are at the heart of every business.<\/strong><\/h5>\n

There is nothing more frustrating for the average customer than having to navigate some company\u2019s automated support and messaging system. When each process \u201chas to be\u201d funneled through an AI empowered chatbot, to customer service representatives, all while distinctly feeling herded and managed, it increases levels of frustration for users. Remember, customers are forced to communicate this way. When phone numbers are intentionally obfuscated, and companies are increasingly relying on chatbot systems to interact, the customer loses their feeling of power and ability to accomplish their goals.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re lost.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no question of the efficacy of chatbots to handle the majority of transactional communications. There is clear evidence that using chatbots and automation has benefits to an organization, especially now that we\u2019re increasingly decentralized. It lowers labor costs and increases the ability to control messaging into CRM funnels, standardizing the experience and providing services at scale. Companies will save 2.5 billion customer service hours using chatbots by the end of 2022.[i]<\/a><\/p>\n

That\u2019s a lot of savings that add to the bottom line.<\/p>\n

But are we sacrificing cost savings for future sales?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The cost savings aren\u2019t the only consideration. Almost half (46%) of customers report that they would prefer to communicate with a live person instead of chatbots.[ii]<\/a> And, since 90% of banks will automate their customer interactions using chatbots by 2022[iii]<\/a>, are we putting the cart before the horse? Will we end up alienating our customers, creating animosity with each interaction, and open up a window for an upstart competitor that wins customer service<\/em> and completely eviscerates our market share?<\/p>\n

Probably.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"The competitor who is going to win the future will be one who understands that the purchase process, and subsequent customer service is–at its core–an emotional experience. One who can understand and engineer empathetic responses to assuage customer fears and triage them to help them solve problems with their experience. A competitor whose communication operation puts empathy at the heart of their interactions.<\/p>\n

They know that without it, the cost savings in non-emotionally intelligent bots are a toxic potion that will inevitably lead to loss after loss\u2026as customers hemorrhage and sales tumble.<\/p>\n

If chatbots and auto attendants are so intoxicating to management because of the cost savings, it\u2019s essential that you engineer emotional intelligence into your system. Indeed, chatbots may actually improve mental health outcomes.[iv]<\/strong><\/a><\/em> But only, and I mean only, if they are up for the challenge of recognizing emotions and responding appropriately.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s look at a recent chatbot experience.<\/strong><\/h5>\n

\"\"Ironically, I had a customer service need to contact a company that I recently chose for services. Let\u2019s say it\u2019s a large telecommunications and entertainment company, that has a state-of-the-art customer service system. Call centers across the world, online tools and automated attendants, chatbots, AI. The whole ball of wax. Certainly costing them millions a year.<\/p>\n

I had a new service installed. It went well, but after the technician left, the interface box continued to conk out. I went through all the self-service apps that were offered; and had to resort to trying to contact customer service. That\u2019s when the fun started.<\/p>\n

The chatbot asked if it could help me. I replied with a description of my problem, and was met with (and I\u2019m paraphrasing): \u201cWOAH hold on there buddy, that\u2019s a lot of words. I get confused and can\u2019t understand that. I do better with short responses.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can imagine my chagrin. So, I dumbed it down for the bot.<\/p>\n

I slowly and methodically responded that I have been doing this self-restart thing for like three days now. I\u2019m now continuing to reply to tell them how frustrating it is to have this problem. It\u2019s like talking to a teenager about technology, they aren\u2019t listening because I\u2019m old, duh,<\/em> and assume they know what I want because, reasons.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sigh. There\u2019s no getting around this, and I\u2019m going to have to talk to a live agent.<\/em><\/p>\n

I responded that I wanted to speak to a live attendant. They responded that the bot would rather handle the communications, thank you. Repeatedly.<\/p>\n

Dismissive little bugger aren\u2019t you? Seriously?!<\/em><\/p>\n

The bot wouldn\u2019t let me contact support to change an outdated phone number, and instead continued to offer to take me down one rabbit hole after another, offering me several \u201cchoices\u201d from their drop down menu. Each time it would not solve the problem and instead took me on an endless cycle of one dead end after another. One problem created another.<\/p>\n

So, only after being so angry and frustrated with the amount of effort it took to accomplish a simple task, the time it\u2019s taken, the loss of agency, the loss of any good will I had toward this company when I chose them was gone.<\/p>\n

Way gone.<\/p>\n

Opportunity lost.<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Customers are not familiar with your nomenclature, and your taxonomies. They don\u2019t know your labels.<\/p>\n

When your bot can\u2019t understand anger and sadness, you do not have customer service. If your system can’t understand when a customer is using humor to hide other emotions\u2014you do not have customer service. You have a machine that creates angry customers. An anger machine on auto pilot, undoing everything you\u2019re trying to accomplish with your product design, marketing, and every step of your value chain.<\/p>\n

Your chatbots are churning out brand-new angry customers every second of every day.<\/strong><\/p>\n

When you see those reports from marketing or customer service? Yeah. Those aren\u2019t \u201cusers.\u201d Those are angry customers who are dying to run to your competitor. As soon as they can. If you\u2019ve locked them into a punitive contract they\u2019ll seek to punish you.<\/p>\n

Each contact just increases the level of animosity, resentment, and futility for your customers.<\/p>\n

The future is empathetic.[v]<\/a><\/strong><\/h5>\n

V.E.R.N. is a real time solution to your emotional detection needs. If you develop a chatbot, it needs to have emotional intelligence. Sentiment analysis won\u2019t cut it. No one knows what to do with \u201cpositive,\u201d \u201cnegative,\u201d \u201cneutral,\u201d or \u201cmixed.\u201d You CAN do something with 66% anger, 51% sadness and 0% humor; which is what you’d get from V.E.R.N. A sentence by sentence breakdown of the emotions present and a confidence level for each one. So not only can you tell if they are not just “negative,” but slightly angry at 51%. Or, maybe they’re really ticked off at you and their anger confidence level shoots to 80% or more. That’s something you can address.<\/p>\n