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Comment by dominotw | Hacker News Reader

> - instant answers to frequently asked questions > - surveys and polls over chat

I don't understand the bot part of this. First looks like a search box over faqs and second sounds like a web wizard survey .

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Look at Wikipedia definition of bot (or other definitions on the first page when searching Google) "Typically, bots perform tasks that are both simple and structurally repetitive, at a much higher rate than would be possible for a human alone."

I think "instant answers to frequently asked questions and surveys and polls over chat" (with some NLP to make it better) surely match that definition, no?

I don't understand why everyone is so fixated on the AI/conversation aspect. :)

With the current state of the technology, companies can benefit by using bots to enhance human-to-human conversations, not trying to replace them altogether.

> companies can benefit by using bots to enhance human-to-human conversations, not trying to replace them altogether.

I think you hit the nail on the head here. Bots should be a complement to human conversations, not a replacement. Having a bot doesn't mean you hire less customer support agents, it just makes them more productive.

Often times, it really means you hire less since there's less support load. E.g. we have a customer which support requests are more than 90% frequently asked questions. Adding a bot to their Facebook page decreased their support load from full time to at most 1h a day. :)

But as you mentioned, when using a bot, the goal should be customer happiness, not cutting costs.

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