Why chatbots fail... and how to guarantee yours won't

The bane of my existence is trying to speak robot when rebooking a flight. Completing simple, routine tasks shouldn’t be difficult. We’ve been trained to hate virtual agents by years of bad behaviour from credit card companies, cable providers, and airlines. 

We carry those sensitivities into the workplace and have a similar knee-jerk reaction when asked to use a chatbot to reset a password or be added to a distribution list. Most enterprise chatbots fail because they’re designed for robots. There’s a better solution for humans at work.

Enterprise chatbots lack three key capabilities essential for broad adoption:

1. They don’t speak the language of employee service
2. They only answer frequently asked questions
3. They don’t know what they don’t know
   
   

Chatbots, by definition, are little more than feeble branding exercises used by companies to exchange low-value, obvious information with employees. Typically, anything a traditional chatbot can do can be accomplished with fewer clicks and less friction via traditional support channels like email, voice, or live chat.

What employees expect is a more intelligent experience. They expect virtual agents to be able to answer questions plus manage tickets and order items without the complexity of dense self-service portals. In other words, virtual agents should be able to do anything a live agent can do… at least as good or better. Virtual agents should learn continuously and know when to escalate to a live agent. They should never prevent employees from interacting with humans if that’s the best way to fix a problem.

The future of automated employee service is a combination of virtual agents to solve routine problems plus intelligent features that make live agents smarter.

Unlike chatbots, systems of intelligence automate the full lifecycle of employee service requests: 

• virtual agents help employees,
• contextual recommendations help live agents, and
• predictive analytics help service owners.
  
  

Join PeopeReigh and Thirdera on November 10 for a live discussion and demo of the future of work. We’ll elaborate on why enterprise chatbots fail… and how to guarantee yours won’t. We’ll share three actionable tips based on discussions with two hundred and fifty CIOs who have successfully deployed systems of intelligence to improve employee experiences. Just for registering, you’ll receive the full research report.