Chatbots are still too stupid for customers
Consumers are disappointed with automated chatbots: They complain that they lack intelligence and are not efficient enough. This is the finding of a survey conducted among 3,500 consumers worldwide.
The study was commissioned by Pegasystems, a provider of strategic software solutions for sales, marketing, service and operations. Although most of those surveyed are of the opinion that chatbots can be fast and convenient under certain circumstances, 65% still prefer "real" people as partners in chats - only 17% would also buy something from a bot.
72 percent of consumers who have used chatbots find them helpful to some extent. However, the interactions in question are judged very differently: A majority of 58 percent rate their chatbot experiences as merely "adequate", while 18 percent find them ineffective or even annoying, with only 16 percent recording good experiences. As the use of chatbots is expected to increase significantly over the next two years, poor chatbot experiences could prove critical for companies.
Customers only prefer chatbots when it comes to the simplest tasks that can be completed quickly, such as tracking an order (60 percent) or searching for basic information (53 percent). Only 17% would also use a bot when purchasing goods or services.
According to respondents, the advantages of chatbots are fast service (56%), the ability to organize their own time (37%) and convenience (36%). If chatbots are implemented well, 43% believe that the interaction can be almost as good as with a human, 34% dispute this and 23% do not know.
The most common customer complaints about chatbots include:
- Insufficient intelligence to answer questions effectively (27 percent)
- Too little consideration of the context (24 percent)
- "Robot-like" behavior with only minor human characteristics (14 percent)
Consumers also stated that they would abandon a chatbot session if the bot could not answer a question (47%), made them work harder than expected (47%) or if the answer was too vague (43%). Some respondents stated that they do not use chatbots at all and have no plans to do so.
Only 25 percent of non-chatbot users expressed a willingness to experiment with a chatbot. The biggest concerns are a lack of experience: the people concerned do not know how to use chatbots (46%), have no confidence in the effectiveness of chatbots (31%) or have concerns about security and data protection (27%).
"As chatbots become more widespread, it is becoming apparent that the quality is falling short of customer expectations," explains Carsten Rust, Director Solution Consulting DACH at Pegasystems in Munich. "In order to really use digital channels as the first line of customer service, companies need to connect their chatbots to the company systems so that they provide relevant information. At the same time, they need to use artificial intelligence to enable truly personalized interactions in real time."
