From Ben Haller
I’m amused at the puzzlement over why people swear at chatbots (15 October, p 26). The most likely explanation, it seems to me, is the same reason that people swear at voicemail systems: they dislike talking to a machine when they really want to talk to a human. This does not seem to be a big mystery. If companies want their customers to be less hostile and angry, perhaps they should try hiring real people to handle customer communication instead of investing in chatbots and voicemail mazes.
Duncan Graham-Rowe writes:
• Ben Haller has a point, but it’s not the whole story. In the course of her research, Antonella De Angeli found that some people would talk to Jabberwacky for as long as seven hours, much of it abusively. This was clearly not out of necessity, given that Jabberwacky offered no service other than a chat.
Menlo Park, California, US
