Many AI chatbots don't work as well as they should. Here's what we do differently

Picture this: it's 11pm on a Thursday, you have forty-seven angry emails from customers, three staff members off sick, and a chatbot that is happily telling customers to "press 1 for sales" in a chat window. Sigh.

Many businesses have this chatbot 'echo chamber': that little widget in the corner of a website that promises "instant help" but more often than not, delivers nothing but frustration. Often these chatbots can turn a simple question into a game of multiple choice that nobody wins.

One of the reasons I love working in tech so much is that I can often say: it does not have to be this way.

Our chatbot does the work for you. They save time, reduce stress, keep customers happy, and help your business grow.

Chatbots can do better

What's behind many chatbots? To be honest, many of them act as contact forms with a touch of personality. They can't really solve problems and they can't answer real questions. Their purpose is pretty much just to funnel people towards a human...if they can even achieve that.

Businesses often part with a lot of cash on chatbot projects that end up answering basic things like:

• What are your opening hours?
• Where are you located?
• Can I speak to a human?

Throw in a complex query from a frustrated customer, and they're often lost. With current technology, this doesn't have to be the case. Because customers do notice. And in a lot of cases, these bots generate more complaints because people get frustrated before they reach a person.

What actually works

At Red Eagle Tech, we've built something much more practical. We are all about automation, and services that do the work for you and save you time and money. We've built a chatbot that actually helps solve real problems, instead of deflecting them. No transfers, no endless waits.

How did we do it? Well, there's no magic involved, although I do like to refer to it as 'software engineering wizardry' - we just focused on three things that a lot of companies skip:

First, real information. Not scripts or guesswork. We used actual support tickets, every odd edge case included.

Second, real connections. The bot can actually do things: refunds, updates, cancellations, lookups. It's not just talk, it's about action.

Third, honesty. If it really gets stuck, it admits it and passes the issue to a person, instead of looping.

The results

One retail client trialled this during one of their busiest sales weekends. In just 48 hours, the bot handled 3,200 chats. Seventy-eight per cent were fully resolved without a person stepping in.

What surprised us

We knew it would be great for simple questions, but we wanted it to excel at complex, multi-step problems, even the kind that often trip up humans.

The best way to test a chatbot? Give it a series of the worst support cases. If it can handle those, it can handle anything. That's the standard we build for.

But when empathy matters most (a ruined wedding dress, a system crash) people still want people. And a chatbot should know when this is the case, and successfully connect you only when needed.

Why most bots fail

From what we've seen, poor bots fail for three main reasons:

• They're often built with little input from customer service teams.
• They're trained on neat scenarios, not messy real-life ones.
• They're not actually programmed to take actions.

What this means for your business

If your chatbot is aggravating your customers, it's not uncommon. If you're sceptical because you've been burned before, we understand. But customer service is getting tougher, not easier. Expectations are higher, teams are stretched, and right now there is pressure on every business to adopt AI just to keep up.

That is why the technology you choose really matters.

A different approach

We might not be the biggest name in the industry. We are a small UK company and, much like our customers, what we do for our clients matters to us. Customer satisfaction is at the forefront of what we do, which is why we stand behind our work and guarantee satisfaction.

We've built a chatbot that actually adds value to your business. That does what it promises. It saves time, reduces frustrations, and lets your team focus on the conversations that really need a human touch.

If you're ready to see the difference, get in touch today for a free, no-obligation consultation.