

“Yes, I am human:” learnings from fast customer service via live chat - rolando
http://blog.indextank.com/239/yes-i-am-human-learnings-from-fast-customer-service-via-live-chat/

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nostromo
I used to work for a competitor of Olark's and I can confirm this happens all
the time. What's funny is that there are two types of companies:

1) Trusts their well-paid chat operators and allows them to type freely.

2) Force-feeds their operators 'canned responses' (as are used in email
support) and doesn't encourage them to move off script.

#2 is always what marketing departments want, but it was always worse for the
customer. The operator's response was too quick (a paragraph of text hastily
selected from a recommended response), there were no misspellings, and they
used PR speak that normal humans don't use. Often people would respond, "are
you a person?" and some small group would ask questions specifically designed
to trip up a bot.

My advice is to allow the people talking to your customer to use a modest
amount of slang (a smiley or an occasional lol is fine if the customer is in a
happy mood) - let them make a few misspellings - and encourage them to really
read the response and even empathize with a customer. Marketing departments
hate this idea, but in the end the feeling of a connection to another human is
worth the risk of offending a grammar nazi.

~~~
dspeyer
If you're talking to a person who can't deviate from the script, you're not
really talking to a person -- you're talking to the script. It's like an AI,
but clunkier.

~~~
Jun8
Right, basically the rep is stuck in the Chinese Room.

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mceachen
AdGrok's seen this a number of times:

\-----------------

USA (Philadelphia,PA) #4859: wow

USA (Philadelphia,PA) #4859: so you are not a bot?

Matthew: Only on the dance floor, man.

\-----------------

USA (New York,NY) #664: haha never chatted on olark, this is fun

antonio: yeah, it's quite the app

USA (New York,NY) #664: didn't think there would be ppl behind it

USA (New York,NY) #664: :)

antonio: there isn't, this is a robot

antonio: :p

USA (New York,NY) #664: hahahah

USA (New York,NY) #664: ok

USA (New York,NY) #664: am very happy if robots are this intelligent

antonio: well, intelligent-seeming...

~~~
manoloe
I am thinking it would be nice to have a 'best of olark
transcripts'collection. Surprising customers with free-flowing interactivity
is what this is all about.

+1 for your 'only on the dance floor,man' response

------
alanfalcon
I worked customer service for "a" major MMO for a while. People who got asked
if they were robots were generally behaving like robots: using macros (pre-
written responses) to respond to questions even when the answer didn't
properly fit, sending responses (even proper responses) to questions faster
than people generally type, or abusing the auto-name-fill-in shortcut to fill
in the character name in every sentence.

In short, there's very likely to be an actual problem when your customers ask
if you're a robot ... not a "cute" problem like you were too quick to answer
their initial request.

~~~
manoloe
Not exactly. As you see in the transcript on the blog, we responded with a
simple "Hi, how can I help you?" and then we're asked if we were a robot. We
don't use pre-written responses, nor do anything else like you suggest. We're
just online, working away.

~~~
alanfalcon
And you'd be much more likely to be seen as a person if you opened with, "Hi,
this is Jorge. How can I help you?"

~~~
manoloe
Interesting... we'll do some tests on alternate ways to introduce ourselves.
Being able to test out different approaches real-time is another benefit from
live chat. thanks!

~~~
elxx
My first thought looking at the transcripts was that seeing "IndexTank" as the
screen name answering the questions rather than a person's name would make me
suspect "robot" at first too. Either way, I agree that introducing yourself to
the user with your own name will do a lot to reduce the suspicion.

~~~
manoloe
That's a great catch. We chose the name for the account when we started using
Olark, and labeled it with the company name. We decided initially to have only
three accounts and rotate them among our team, so all of the accounts were
given IndexTank labels. As we are expanding our use of Olark, we will give
each of our developers their own account, and they could put in their first
name there.

We will test it out. thanks.

------
swombat
How do you deal with the constant distraction to the dev team? Must be quite
bad if you have a lot of customers and a small dev team.

Having random people pop up on your IM client seems like the opposite of an
environment that encourages a state of "flow"...

~~~
manoloe
Our main objective is really to get to know our customers. We've been working
on the platform for a fair amount of time, and we need interactions to tell us
how we can make it better.

Also, we do rotate accounts among the team which helps some.

Finally, we don't see them as 'random people' -- we see them as developers
like us, using a service we built. WE LOVE THAT.

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lachyg
I added this to <http://paggstack.com> since the very beginning, and I swear,
it's the most commonly asked question over any other. I always try to put some
humour in my response, but damn! We need a solution ;)

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ffffruit
I cant help but think of the fonejacker cinema prank and laugh.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgOkJjjwmnk>

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sovande
It is like a reverse turing test.

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mitko
That will work until an AI can pass the Turing Test.

~~~
meatsock
.. there may be more important things to worry about when that happens.

~~~
mercurialist
Skynet: hi I'm a self-conscious robot based on technology from the future, how
can I help you?...

