Adjust support expectations; replace the bot with a form
tl;dr: Having a support chat is giving a false impression of one actually getting one-on-one, immediate support. I do however understand why tado absolutely wants people to go through the bot instead of just sending an email. So how about we compromise and everyone gets something they want…
Long version:
Looking through this and other communities, as well as reviews, it is clear that a lot of users take issue with the fact that is no support hotline (at least for regular users). While I can sympathize with people wanting to get their questions answered "right now", I can also appreciate how such a hotline would be very difficult to staff - especially with such a complex product.
tado does however offer the chat bot as the one and only way to get support. And a lot of people - me included - seem to hate it with a burning passion. And I do see why: You have to volunteer a lot of information about yourself, your devices and your issue just to be presented with some AI-generated answer and link to the knowledge base. At this point you will have to keep fighting with the chatbot to convince them that their answer is not helpful, and that you want to talk to a human.
Up until this point, the chat with the bot was just annoying - but I think this is where the whole things gets misleading: You are on the webpage with the chatbox open and a message, that someone will reply to you soon. And sure - if tado actually had enough resources - someone could actually chat with you one-on-one to get your issue resolved. But that doesn't happen - instead your inquiry will be answered within the next 24 to 72 hours. If you are still on the support-page (or return there), you can actually see the answer as a "chat"-message - but luckily the answer is also sent via email.
In other words: the chat invokes the image of instant support and chat but fails at delivering this promise.
The result of this seems to be that people open multiple chats (and by extension: multiple support tickets). Some will even take to the forum here and ask for help - and someone will tell them their super special secret trick of writing to a long and cryptic email-address. Except that email-address is specific to an old support-case of a person. And every person who will write to that address will just pile on their completely different problem into someone else's support ticket.
I can see why tado insists on people going through the support chat/bot:
- You have to give you personal details: The agent can look up your tado account without having to ask you again for those details
- You have to provide the model/serial number of your device: The agent (and chat bot) can see what device and model you own and give you a better tailored answer instead of having to send another message asking "is this V3 or X?"
- And lastly I am fairly confident that despite "a few" very loud complainers (me included), the bot does indeed provide a very quick and helpful service to a lot of customers with simple problems that are indeed already answered in the knowledge base.
The problem - as I see it - is that you have to fight the bot at times to get to an agent/convince the bot that the AI-generated answer is not useful and the above mentioned misguided presentation of "this is an instant chat".
So I am proposing the following solution, which offers the best of both worlds and hopefully gets everyone what they want:
- Remove the chatbot
- Offer a support-form on the tado-website/knowledge base
- Have that form ask for exactly the same things as the bot (Account email, Device Generation, Serial number, Problem description, …)
- Display the AI-generated answer to the problem description with links to the knowledge database either after submitting the form or include it in the receipt-acknowledgement email.
- Also have a link/button underneath that answer: "Did this solve your issue? If not, click here and a human will answer you asap".
That way, tado will still collect all the information required to fill the dataset in their support-tool (Intercom), but customers will only have to do one iteration of bot-help. And since there is no chat-box with a blinking textinput-cursor, no one will be sitting on hot coals waiting for that magic "Agent is typing" message.
Thank you for attending my ted talk.
Comments
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Wow I didn't realise the web chat was not actually a chat. I wondered why they were taking hours and hours to respond.
What on earth is the point of having CHAT functionality on your website if you're only using it as a web form? Who had that bright idea?
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Well, to their credit: It could be a chat if an agent happens to grab your request the moment you're done typing… And you are chatting with a bot back and forth… 🤷♂️
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Actually, it is a live* chat function once you click 'talk to a person'. This option is provided after you've given the relevant information @martini mentioned and you click past a few possible (but sometimes somewhat generic) solutions offered by the bot.
The bot is annoying, but it saves a lot of back and forth with our customers. Can you imagine when you're a tado support agent and you get the message "it does not work" from an anonymous user? You'd have so many questions. What does not work? When did it not work? How can I find your account? In what context did it not work? What do you mean by 'not working'? Do not underestimate how little context some customers provide if you don't explicitly ask. You'd first have to fire a bunch of questions back to the customer, before you can even look at the potential issue. That's where the bot comes in.
Secondly, some customer questions are quite easily solved by reading the appropriate help center page. And yes, some questions are much more difficult. Still, the bot provides links to the help center to 'easy' questions, and by our statistics this solves the issue of quite a significant number of customers. Thus, it allows our agents to have more capacity for more difficult questions.
Now I do realise it can be annoying. However, besides the tedious task of filling in the relevant information (I presume as a customer it really does not matter where you enter this information), you can get past the bot in just a few clicks. I personally do not see how a form with similar mandatory questions would be an improvement. But I am very open to arguments though :)
* The 'live' part of the chat very much depends on how many support requests we get, time of day and so on. In summer, you can have a real live chat. However, when it's cold and suddenly everyone and their mother contacts our support in their lunch break, then we do not have the capacity to offer semi-instant replies. It would mean we'd have to hire (and train) a boatload of extra people for a few months a year, which would increase the cost of our product by quite a lot. So, in winter the live chat becomes less live and more similar to an email conversation.
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I'm going through it now.
1. Sales consultation? → No I have a different question.
2. tado X? → No, I need help with another product.
3. What can I help you with? → I have a technical question
(out of working hours message. Team gets back to you via email)
4. Which device do you need help with? → My Smart Radiator Thermostat
5. Email & detailed description of what you've tried in the past 24h → someone@tado.tado + blablabla
6. Serial number of the device with the problem → VA0000000
7. time&date → right now
We'll get back to you as soon as possible.
The first 4 questions were simply clicking the right answer. 5-7 required a bit of input. Excluding typing the problem description, I took maybe 1 minute. Again, I do understand why it's annoying. You just want to talk to a person. But, honestly, if you take the effort to answer these questions, the support agent can address the issue asap, usually without having to come back to you with return questions.
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