I built 4 AI chatbots before I realized I was asking the wrong questions

I spent 3 months building chatbots for my shop's website, each one smarter than the last. I kept tweaking the code and training data, but customers still complained about dumb answers. Then a friend asked me what I actually wanted the bot to solve, and I realized I had never defined that. I was so focused on making it "smart" that I skipped the basic step of mapping out real customer problems. Has anyone else found themselves building fancy AI features that miss the actual point?

2 comments

2 Comments

gray_roberts21d ago

3 weeks ago I watched a guy spend 8 grand on a chatbot system that could generate poetry but couldn't tell you store hours. That's the trap right there. You think more intelligence equals better results, but your buddy nailed it asking what problem you're solving. Most shop owners would be better off with a simple flow chart that routes to actual humans for the hard stuff. Fancy features just hide the fact that you skipped the boring planning work.

owens.willow21d ago

You mentioned "fancy features just hide the fact that you skipped the boring planning work." That really hits home. I've noticed this same pattern in so many areas beyond just chatbots. People buy expensive kitchen gadgets they never use because what they really needed was a better knife and a simple recipe. Or they sign up for complicated software at work when a shared spreadsheet would do the job. We get distracted by shiny things and forget that the basic, boring questions are usually the most important ones to answer first. Good planning just isn't as exciting as building something new, but it saves a whole lot of time and money in the long run.