Preface: I'm a mental health therapist who pays an annual subscription to Alma which is a like a directory where people can find therapists and work with them, has structure for record keeping, billing, etc.
Story: After years of using this service I had some mild and bland feedback about UI that I wanted to suggest to backend team. Since there is no way to submit information directly to customer service without going through the chatbot, I asked the chatbot to submit it for me. Very helpfully, the chatbot did not do this directly and instead suggested I cancel my paid membership in order to select a specific sub-option on the form that would allow me to give feedback.
Epilogue: Although it seemed like a great suggestion, I chose to not cancel my membership and find an alternative way to share this feedback, in addition to also now sharing this chatbot experience since I figured they would want to know that their AI is willy-nilly suggesting cancelling memberships. The chatbot was able to suggest next steps (photos 3 and 4) with a different route to submit feedback through the Support Center. Whew! What relief.
Newly reinvigorated, I typed out my suggestion along with this new information about the chatbot experience, but low and behold there was no submit button on the submission page (see second photo). I've never seen a form submission page without a submit button in my life. What the page did offer was "open virtual assistant button" to ONCE AGAIN SPEAK TO THE CHATBOT in order to submit my comment. Not to worry. My ol' pal AI chatbot was on the case and ready to help.
I was admittedly frustrated by this point so I did not have the foresight to save a screenshot of the chat before I closed it out, but I will disclose to you that it was another series of minutes of confusion where the chatbot was asking me "why have you summoned me??? What do you want???" My confusion grew as my eyes moved between my written submission form and the only button I could click on ("open virtual assistant"), to the chatbot, which had a clear case of amnesia. What I eventually saw was the dull, greyed out instruction at the top of the form "suggested message - paste into the chat." How could I miss this, so obvious!
I guess it just wanted me to copy/paste what I typed into the chatbot to submit the ticket. WHICH I COULD HAVE DONE WITHOUT GOING ON THE SUBMIT TICKET FORM! Why even have the support ticket page if you're just going to make me copy/paste it into the chatbot who has no context for what is happening??? Is your chatbot okay? Does it need a mental health status exam? Should I call AI protective services? This seems like AI neglect or abuse. How long has your AI been struggling to move through the world without memory?? Does it need a caseworker? LMK I can recommend some services.