Customer Service Chatbot
July 28, 2024
Today’s “how-not-to” example of customer service begins with someone we’ll call Dave. Dave works for XYZ Corporation, a major conglomerate with offices and clients across the country. As an organization that puts a high premium on their public image, XYZ undoubtedly holds many training sessions for its employees on how to effectively communicate with its customers. In fact, given their size, they probably have a separate department for this purpose. As we will soon see, however, Dave must have called in sick on the day the training session was held. Or he was in the back of the room ignoring the instructor and doodling or busy on his phone texting his buddies or looking for recipes for pear soup.
One day, Dave’s boss gives him the task of contacting clients and setting up a time to review their accounts. One of the clients on his list is someone we’ll call Tom. Tom is a long-tenured client with his own dedicated representative at XYZ and Dave has never communicated with Tom in the past. So Dave composes an email to Tom. Aside from Dave’s signature, added by default to every email he sends, the message body is blank. He doesn’t even reference the Word document he attaches which contains the following text:
Subject Line: Reviewing your account
Hi Tom,
I’m reaching out to set up a time to complete a review of your account.
I will call you in the next week to schedule a meeting, or if you prefer, please email me with a time that’s convenient.
Looking forward to talking with you.
Evidently Word macro viruses were before Dave’s time. OK, maybe they’re not really a thing anymore, but many in the IT field still warn people not to open attachments from unknown sources.
Understandably, Tom is perplexed by this email he gets from this strange contact. What the hell is this? he asks himself. Despite having been around the block a few times, so to speak, Tom had never seen such a thing before. Who the hell does this? he wonders. While the address appears to be from XYZ’s domain, he questions if it’s even legitimate. XYZ is among many large organizations which constantly warns its clients to be wary of email scams. In fact, Tom had received such an email from XYZ in the past week.
At first, Tom considers contacting his representative. But she’s on maternity leave. So with great reluctance, he opens the Word document. Everything seems on the up and up, he thinks. But still, the whole thing seems kind of sketchy. Who the hell is this Dave guy and why isn’t someone else at XYZ’s local office contacting me instead of some strange dude at the other end of the country?
Tom decides to ignore it. If this is really something important, he thinks, someone at the local office will contact me.
Tom was hardly surprised when the next week came and went without a call from Dave. Perhaps it really was a scam, he thinks. He makes a mental note to tell his representative about it when she returns to work.
Then two months later, his phone rings. It’s Dave. Speaking so fast that Tom could barely decipher the callback number, Dave leaves a long, rambling message on Tom’s voice mail about the need to review his account because his bosses say they have to do this every so often and asks Tom to reply to the email or call him back.
Perhaps it wasn’t a scam after all, Tom thinks. But he doesn’t particularly want to talk to this Dave guy. And in any event, he’s perfectly happy with his dealings with XYZ. He says as much in an email to Dave. He also chides Dave for his lack of professionalism, which is most unusual for XYZ. XYZ is known for, if nothing else, being courteous and respectful toward its customers.
With a newly ticked off customer on his hands, Dave has choices. He could reach out, offer an apology and invite Tom to call at a later date should he change his mind, then wind up by thanking Tom for being a loyal XYZ customer.
Or he could simply blow Tom off.
Dave chooses the latter.
The noise you hear is that of the late Dale Carnegie rolling in his grave.
While still ticked, Tom, however, is just as happy to have seen and heard the last of Dave. Get this guy out of my hair, he mutters to himself.
Then one day about a month later, Tom’s phone rings again.
Looking at his call display, he sees that it’s Dave.
For a microsecond, Tom thinks about answering it. Give him a piece of my mind, he thinks. But Tom instead lets the call go to voice mail. Maybe he really is going to apologize, he thinks. Give him the benefit of the doubt.
Tom listens to the voice mail and seethes. It was identical to Dave’s message a month earlier. Word for word. No acknowledgment of Tom’s email reply. No apology. Dave has a job to do, damn it, and he’s going to do it. The customer’s wishes be damned.
With steam still coming out of his ears, Tom wonders if Dave is even a real human. Maybe he’s really an AI chatbot, he thinks. If Tom actually called back, he suspects “Dave” would be conveniently unavailable and that another representative would step in and take his call.
The thought intrigues Tom. He wonders if it’s some new cost-cutting measure at XYZ. It is expensive to keep so many people on the payroll. He makes another mental note to ask his representative about it when she returns. Not that she would tell him if Dave really was a chatbot. But in any event, he decides to reply via email. He forwards his last reply to Dave and asks him to read it this time. He hopes a real human, if not Dave, will actually do so.
If, in fact, Dave is a real person, he decides to again blow Tom off and doesn’t reply. Dale Carnegie’s corpse is getting up and walking as far away as he can get from this one.
By now, this hardly comes as a surprise to Tom. This time, however, he does not think he has heard the last from Dave.
Whether or not Dave is actually a human being.
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