Bank forced to rehire workers after lying about chatbot productivity, union says

The only time a chatbot worked for me is Amazon's, of all things. It auto approved my return after I answered a few questions.

I haven't had any chatbot outside that be useful to me. I always end up getting to the end of all the prompts only to be told I need to speak to a human or the chatbot going in a circle, in which I have to reach out to a different layer of support.

I was about to say the same thing. Amazon pretty much nailed it, at least for simple, straightforward "happy path" returns and refunds. I was actually kind of shocked after the "chatbot" conversation, sitting there thinking "Really, that's it and we're done?" and sure enough the money was refunded!

Sounds like a downgrade to me considering the previous return flow was to just press the return link and answer one multiple choice question.

That's still how it is, at least for me in the US. I've never had to interact with a chat bot for anything, but maybe it depends on what you're returning.

> I always end up getting to the end of all the prompts only to be told I need to speak to a human or the chatbot going in a circle

I've had success with just repeating "Agent please" or "I wanna talk to human" if I notice the chat bot isn't a traditional conditional-if-else-bot but an LLM, and it seems like most of them have some sort of escape-hatch they can trigger, but they're prompted to really avoid it. But if you continue sending "Agent please" over and over again, eventually it seems like the typical context-rot prevents them from avoiding the escape-hatch, and they send you along to a real human.

I think that's partially because Amazon returns are the most happy path support interaction I've ever seen. They basically always grant the refund/return (in my experience if it's soonish after purchase) and it's mostly about gathering the info to get it going rather than actually resolving an issue. The main decision on Amazon's side seems to be if they want you to bother sending the item back or not.

the last time i tried this i got pretty far then it switched to a human and i had to provide all the same information again. and then the person ghosted me.

On the other hand, amazon chat support, which they forced on at some point, treats your time as worth zero.

I think I used to just type in my problem into a text box and press send like an email.

I’ve run into this with “personal care items” that are non-returnable. E.g. I received a “two pack” of eye drops that had obviously popped open in the warehouse and contained only one bottle.

I couldn’t do the regular return flow because hygiene, but the chat bot immediately issued a refund.

But you don't need a chatbot for this. I just processed an amazon return yesterday without a chatbot - just a form with maybe 4 fields, I filled them in, hit submit, and it directed to a page with shipping instructions and labels. Easy peasy.

Totally agree. If Amazon steered me towards the form, I would have just used that, but I couldn't find it and the USE THE CHATBOT messaging was relentless.

I saw a social media video of people at the drive in, it was a robot voice asking what they'd like. "I'd like a million cups of water please.". The voice immediately changed to a noticably human one asking "Hi how can I help you."

> The main decision on Amazon's side seems to be if they want you to bother sending the item back or not.

Hah. I had to argue with a chatbot and representatives when a bottle of shampoo arrived shattered and the Amazon package was filled with shampoo.

They literally said "put what remains of the product into a bag and return to UPS Store". I explained the absurdity, but no. So I duly show up at UPS who, to no-one's surprise but Amazon's, didn't particularly want a zip lock bag with 16 oz of shampoo in it.

And then they sent me a replacement bottle that broke similarly.

They didn't try that route again, but similarly, explaining that the "free replacement we sent you" was also delivered damaged, and I was still out money with no shampoo to show for it, also took a lot of effort. "But I see we sent you a replacement item, so you can't also get a refund." "Your replacement is also broken." "Oh, I thought that was the first bottle." "It was, too."

I wonder how long they will keep that up for. Those returns must be costing them a fortune every quarter.

Every time I've returned something to Amazon it was because of their fuck up (sadly a lot more common lately). They send me the completely wrong item, the item arrives broken, etc.

They've kept it up for several decades and in cases where it's not shipping damage or error (wrong item sent by amazon) they mostly pass the cost off to the sellers afaik. They also have their second hand stores where they sell returns and can recoup a lot of that loss. The ease of returns is one of the main things that keep me from completely cutting off amazon purchases and they probably know that and accept the losses for the gains.