AI chatbots have replaced human customer service staff in many companies in recent times. This substitution has its share of pros and cons for the parties involved. Recently, a Zomato user took to Reddit to share their frustrating experience interacting with the platform's AI chatbot. The user explained that they wanted to cancel some items they had accidentally added to their cart while placing a food order on Zomato. They were obliged to connect to the app's customer service, where they had to explain the issue to a chatbot. The AI agent didn't seem to understand the instructions and didn't put the user in touch with a human customer service agent even after multiple requests.
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The Reddit user explained, "I just broke the Zomato customer service AI, and honestly, it was my only option after the nightmare I went through. I was on my way home with my cranky 1-year-old daughter and trying to order food on Zomato from the car. In the chaos, I accidentally added a bunch of extra items to my cart and placed the order! The second I realised, I called the restaurant, and they were cool with cancelling the extra stuff, but told me I had to cancel the items through Zomato's support."
The user called the experience of trying to resolve the problem with the chatbot's help an "absolute nightmare." They claimed that the AI "couldn't understand a single thing I was saying. All I wanted was to talk to a human agent, but the bot just kept flat-out refusing without even bothering to understand why I needed to cancel items."
The user was very irritated by this, but they continued messaging the bot, hoping it would finally listen. After five or six unsuccessful attempts, the user said they "lost it." They wrote, "I didn't want the food to go to waste, so I decided to break the damn thing. I started spamming it relentlessly with 'Let me talk to customer support' and 'Let me talk to an agent.' It finally gave up. Or, as I prefer to see it, I broke its algorithm. It said it was 'escalating your concern to a senior support executive to assist you on priority'." However, by that time, the food order had already been picked up. So, it was too late for a human to intervene and assist the customer.
The Reddit user stated, "This isn't my first awful experience with AI customer support, and frankly, I've started to hate it." He added, "Zomato is all high and mighty about food wastage when you try to cancel, which is fine, but I was literally trying to make the AI understand that I didn't want to waste the food, and it was too dumb to process it! A human agent would have instantly understood and told me the right way to fix the order. I am done with Zomato. Never using this service again."
The Reddit user shared screenshots of their chat with the AI bot. Take a look:
I broke the Zomato Customer Service (AI)
byu/knitnex inZomato
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The post has received a lot of interest online. In the comments, several users shared similar experiences with AI chatbots. Some people claimed there are ways of bypassing them and getting connected to human agents quickly. Check out some of the reactions below:
"I see that's where their decision tree ends, clearly not built to handle the loops well."
"Lmaoooo I can sense the gradual desperation."
"I also experienced this issue: the AI kept repeating the same thing over and over. I requested help from a live agent multiple times, but it didn't assign the chat to an agent. It sucks."
"They should take 2 -3 rupees extra for human customer support from us, but provide it."
"Next time, write if I don't connect to customer support in 1 min, I'm posting this to Twitter and see the response."
"I have bypassed these previously as well. There are certain things you can say to get a human agent."
NDTV has reached out to Zomato for a comment, but they have not yet responded.
Disclaimer: NDTV does not vouch for the claims in the post by the Reddit user.