Terms of Trade · Edition 3: The technology proposal
Chatbot
Definition
An automated conversation on a website or in an app, once scripted and now usually driven by a language model, that answers customer questions and, in the better implementations, completes tasks such as tracking an order or starting a return. Its value is set by what it is connected to; a chatbot that cannot see the order is a search box with manners.
Field note
A chatbot is a friendly AI-driven interaction on a website intended to enrage and infuriate customers, so that the business can learn what expletives its addressable audience has picked up.
Board question
What share of conversations end with the customer’s problem solved and no human involved, and what share end with a swear word?
Applied through
The Process foundation of the AI Diagnostic, because a chatbot can only do what the service operation behind it already does; Customer Truth in the Cat’s Whiskers, because the transcripts are the second-best query log in the business.
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