Chatbots Only Exist Because the UI Sucks

There was a time when building a good UI was really hard. My default Microsoft Word window had at least five toolbars. My web browser opened to Yahoo, where finding anything felt impossible. Internet Explorer sprouted toolbars I never remembered installing. We crammed features into every nook and cranny of the screen.

Then minimalist design took over the web. Finally, we had breathing room. Finally, I could see the actual background color of a page. But I also couldn't find anything useful because every feature was buried behind a hidden menu.

Google became our default support tool. When was the last time you clicked the help menu in your favorite application? Never. You Google how to perform a task, and Google shows you how. But what if you're not looking for "how to do X?" What if you need to know where your order is? What if you need information specific to your account that Google has no way of accessing? For that, only the company or its support team can help you.

But support teams are expensive. You need something resembling a call center. Even outsourcing doesn't eliminate the cost.

A few years back, I worked at a small startup building AI chatbots to answer exactly these types of questions. Where is my order? How do I return this? Can I exchange these shoes for a different size?

We automated the responses. It was amazing. We resolved up to 40% of queries without human intervention. We had clients worldwide, and it worked remarkably well. But one question remained in the back of my mind. Why are customers using the chatbot in the first place? Why are they asking for tracking information? Why don't they just check the website?

After reviewing dozens of client websites, I reached a simple conclusion: their UI sucked.

Our clients made their interfaces terrible in two ways. One unintentional, one deliberate.

The Unintentional Failures

Many e-commerce sites bury order information in bizarre places. You navigate through submenus, click three links deep, only to find your order with no useful details. Poor integration between the e-commerce platform and the internal POS system means the order status never reflects reality. Sometimes you have to call and read your order number to someone with direct system access.

Even if they couldn't provide real-time updates, why didn't they simply state on the website: "Orders update within 24 hours." Any information beats silence.

The Intentional Obstacles

Then there are the deliberate cases. Companies that actively hide information from customers.

Facebook won't give you a direct link to close your account. Instead, their help page lists seven steps to reach the deletion page. I've bookmarked it, but they regularly update the process to ensure you always jump through hoops.

At the AI startup, some potential clients explicitly asked us to create a maze to frustrate customers trying to cancel subscriptions. When we refused, they ghosted us.

I found it ironic that clients would pay us to automate order information delivery instead of simply adding a prominent link to their homepage. We even built a product, a single page where customers could handle all order-related transactions themselves. Our clients never realized that if they'd just built that page themselves, they wouldn't have needed us at all.

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When a customer reaches for your chatbot, it's not because they think chatbots are cool. It's because you've failed them.

Somewhere along the way, they couldn't find their tracking information. They got lost in a labyrinth of FAQs. They hit a roadblock trying to resolve a simple issue. By the time they open that chat window, they're already frustrated or confused. They don't want another layer of complexity. They want a fast, simple solution.

Your chatbot is a band-aid covering a wound you inflicted. Fix your UI. Make information easy to find. Stop hiding basic functionality behind menus and mazes and you might not need that expensive chatbot after all.

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