Gartner predicts that chatbots will become a primary customer service channel within five years. Whatever you think of chatbots, these and other automated customer service solutions, such as those unavoidable automated phone answering systems you encounter at all large (and, increasingly, smaller) companies where you have to constantly “press 1 for x,” “press 2 for y,” etc., are only going to get more common.
What does this mean for customers?
Chatbots are obviously convenient for businesses and websites -they provide an automated, low-cost and low-maintenance way to provide customer service. But how good is it for customers?
Do people really like chatbots or find them useful? On the one hand, they do make it easy to find answers to very basic questions. But they are also part of a larger, disturbing trend, one that makes it ever harder for customers to find an actual human to help them.
You can read more about this perspective here: