On Chatbots and Dishwashers
The expectations of future technology
What is your least favourite chore? Mine, without any doubt, is doing the dishes. Dishwashing is a task that is, by its nature, extremely repetitive and endless. Literally every single glass, fork or plate that you touch has to go through an entire process of soaping, rinsing, drying and putting it back where it belongs.
This is a perfect problem for technology to solve. If you asked somebody sixty years ago what an automatic dish washer would look like, they would probably come up with something like this:
This beautiful machine is a robot that looks a lot like a human. Seeing it wash the dishes is a strange experience: every movement is precise but slow, it tries to be efficient but looks clumsy.
My guess is, this is not what you have in your home. More likely your solution will look something like this:
A dishwasher is probably one of the most underrated machines of our time. Think about its undeniable magic: dishes go in dirty, you add some detergent, wait a while, and they come out perfectly clean for you to use again.
Even the very best humanoid robot we have today washes dishes very slowly and clumsily, and costs a small fortune.
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Humans have figured out which parts of the dishwashing process are perfect for a machine (rinsing, cleaning, drying), and which steps are best left to humans (moving plates and cutlery to and from the dishwasher).
If you look at how innovation spreads, it is almost always a combination of a technological breakthrough combined with a changing role for the person interacting with that technology: you cannot expect the same of a dishwasher than of a person you hire to do the dishes. You still have to put all the dishes in, and take everything out yourself.
Similarly, if you look at the expectations companies have of chatbots, they expect them to be or to become a replacement for a human customer support agent, solving every question they have and answering just like a support agent would. Like little typing robots behind a computer screen.
They’re not.
And they shouldn’t try to be… Chatbots are more useful when they supplement agents in providing the best possible support to users. They are here to help you with requests that aren’t worth the attention of a human. Do you know how many people ask something that’s already on your website? A lot.
Furthermore, next to saving human agents time by handling simple requests, bots’ data crunching capabilities can also assist in more complex issues by providing the right input at the right time.
We need to get rid of this idea that chatbots are little typing robots behind a computer screen.
So how will people interact with chatbots, and conversational interfaces in general? Probably the greatest strength of chatbots is the fact that conversational communication is extremely intuitive for people. There are a lot of people who are not able to interact with a website or an app. They might not have access to a smartphone, might be too old or too young, might not see very well. An increasingly large group of users is currently ignored when new interfaces are created. This group can be helped with a conversational interface, as conversation is so essential to being human.
Our goal with chatbots should always be to create an interface that is as intuitive and fluent as the conversational medium allows it to be, while still allowing a transfer to a human agent when the chatbot doesn’t know the answer.
Only when we maintain these goals when designing chatbots, we can achieve the increased efficiency chatbots promise us while developing a more inclusive technological experience.
Thanks to Delphine Jacquemart and Nico De Vriendt for destroying my initial conclusion and helping me see the light.
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