Not a Ro-Bot
Online ordering is fantastic and convenient, right? Once you’ve entered all your personal details including your inside leg measurement, address, and payment method, that is. And waited for your authentication PIN. And dithered over entering your credit card details before hovering your mouse over the big orange ORDER NOW button and – phew! You’ve made it! Your stuff magically wings its way to you pronto. All without any human intervention.
Only trouble is, things can go pear shaped pretty quickly when you’ve got a query.
Enter the Chatbot, the pop-up window, saying something cheery like ‘Chat With Us’! But don’t be fooled. The Chatbot is often wholly automated and programmed only to answer questions it knows the answer to. Which, curiously, never seem to be things you need to know.
Whatever you do, don’t try and engage it in conversation. Chatbots are simple creatures at heart and only have so many programmed responses. They often get confused or completely ignore something said previously. Even more infuriating is when they go rogue. If given too much information (too many words) to process, like a real person, they can’t cope and start firing back bizarre answers, such as –
Bot: How may I help you?
Customer: Are you able to take refillable water bottles into the venue?
Bot: We don’t have any events at the moment.
C: Can you take water bottles in?
Bot: Sorry we don’t accept take away requests.
C: Can I bring my reusable water bottle?
Bot: We don’t allow dogs on the premises. What else can I help you with?
Troll hackers have endless fun masquerading as bots, something Optus should be keenly aware of right now. Like the Customer Support channel for a popular UK High Street jeweller. When a customer posted a rant about his lost ring, the ‘bot’ replied, OK, calm down Frodo. Then further responded to the customer’s fury with the name’s Gollum, my precious.
On the rare occasion you can liaise with a human, it’s likely to cost more. I’m okay with this because people need to get paid. So, can someone please explain why booking online movie tickets costs more than buying them from a human? The Cremorne Orpheum charges an up-front ‘admin fee’ with no allocated seating and still requires queueing to collect your tickets on arrival. This is not progress.
Even places you buy stuff from in person aren’t off the hook, such as the new Harris Farm. Yes, yes, it’s wonderful, even if your shopping experience mirrors Ikea (lost for hours on end and you can’t leave for less than a hundred bucks). I buy quails’ eggs there as I’m allergic to chicken egg protein. Hooray! No more driving to Willoughby!
I’ve been to the new store six times. There’ve been no quails eggs each time. The fifth time this happened, I tracked down the manager and politely asked about the eggs. He told me a curious thing, which made sense on one level and none on another. The staff have nothing to do with the ordering, ‘the computer does it all.’ No, it can’t be overridden. It’s a set and forget type of thing.
Back to the Willoughby store I go. It’s much smaller and less fancy than Lane Cove but they always have my eggs. They either do their orders manually or some smart person has programmed their ordering bot just right.