Ask HN: Who Are the "Virtual Assistants" For? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Who Are the "Virtual Assistants" For?

5 pointspreciousoo4 comments

Not the new AI virtual assistants, I mean those chatboxes that websites have been popping up in your face for the last 5 years that claim to help you with your issue.

They feel like the automated voice assistants that try to help with your issue when you call your bank, in that 99% of the time you end up shouting "please give me a human" until your request is granted.

I always ignore them, but I doubt they'd be this prevalent if people weren't using them. But I can't think of a single time they've ever helped me. So who are they for?

The main reason is it saves money and the company can trim their customer support team and reduce investment. It gets justified and sold by chatbot-churning services to clueless CTOs/sales teams as a cost saving way of guiding visitors towards things they need, and that it's much better for user experience. Companies see other companies doing it so it kind of becomes an expected standard on a site.

To try and play devil's advocate:

  - They let users access a FAQ-like experience anywhere in your app. This is already easily done using tabs but it may help less technical users.
  - They often include a way of escalating to a real human.
  - I personally (and many others) find textual communication less stressful than a phone call. It probably lets the CS rep on the other end juggle more customers at once too.

I have never ever ever got anything useful out of a chat bot.

i used one at bunny.net. their ai bot helped me in their pricing.

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