Is There Anything Else I Can Help You With?
You know that moment when you click on a website's little chat bubble, ask a simple question, and immediately regret it?
I've been testing chatbots. A lot of them. On big company websites, government websites, small business websites, even on other web agencies' websites. Here's what I found.
The lowlights first.
I asked an insurance company's chatbot "what does dog insurance cover?" It told me about vehicle collisions with animals. It thought I was asking about hitting a dog with my car.
I typed "hullo" to a major retailer's chatbot. It said "Sorry, I didn't quite catch that." Then when I tried to leave, it asked "Is there anything else I can help you with?" four times in a row. I said no each time. It kept asking.
I tested a chatbot being used by a national business networking group. Asked it a straightforward question about an upcoming event. It opened with "Righto, mate!" and called something "a bit of a gizmo." Someone programmed it to sound Australian and it sounds like a tourism ad written by an American.
These aren't small businesses with tiny budgets. These are major organisations spending real money on chat experiences that leave you worse off than a phone number and a contact form.
Most of them fall into one of three categories.
The button maze
Click a button, get more buttons. No memory of what you already asked. Every path leads to "call us" or "sign in." You could have just called in the first place.
The script reader
Doesn't matter what you type. It has a script and it's sticking to it. Its only real job is to get your name and email.
The costume
Looks like AI. Has a friendly avatar and a chat bubble. Underneath it's the same keyword-matching FAQ lookup we've had since 2010, just wearing a nicer outfit.
Then I checked closer to home. I went through about fifty web and digital agencies across Newcastle, the Hunter Valley, and Lake Macquarie. These are companies that build websites for a living.
Three had a chatbot on their site. Three out of about fifty.
Some of those agencies specifically advertise AI services on their website. Still no chatbot on their own site.
I'm not pointing this out to be smug. We've been building chat agents for clients that are actually trained on the business, that genuinely answer questions, that don't just funnel everyone to a contact form. And it's clear this is still very early.
If you've been put off by a chatbot before, you're not wrong to be sceptical. Most of them are bad. But the gap between a bad chatbot and a good one is enormous. The good ones don't read from a script. They know the business. They answer real questions.
And they don't ask if there's anything else they can help with four times in a row.
Away from the Keyboard
Speaking of not much behind the surface. I was walking to a conference and passed a construction site where the carpark used to be. Tall mesh fence. Couldn't see a thing. So I held my phone up as high as I could reach.
Mostly sand. A couple of drillers bolting the retaining walls together. Not a lot going on yet. But that's kind of the point. Something's being built. Chat agents trained on the actual business, wearing the client's brand, that remember what you asked two messages ago. Pretty much the opposite of everything above.
