There is a special kind of hope that only exists on support sites.

You open the page thinking this time the chatbot will actually solve everything, quickly, without queues, without elevator music in my ear.

The little chat window pops up, and very confident:

Hi, I am your virtual assistant

I can help you with some things

You look at the screen and decide

ok, let us be a cooperative user today. I will give the bot a real chance.

The chatbot offers the usual menu.

• Second copy of invoice
• Track an order
• Update my details
• Talk about another issue

You pick the option that seems closest to your problem, even if it does not quite fit.

The bot answers with professional enthusiasm:

Got it, I will help you with that

Before we continue, please tell me your full name, email, phone number, account number, and the reason you are contacting us

You sigh, but you play along.

You type everything carefully.

You write a clear explanation of the problem, almost like a mini case study.

The chatbot thinks, or at least pretends to think.

I am checking your information

One moment please

And then the circle begins.

It sends you a help article you already tried.

You say it did not work.

It offers another menu.

You pick a new option.

It starts the flow again.

You explain the issue differently.

It thanks you for your patience and sends another generic link. At some point, your faith in automation starts to wobble.

You came in trying to avoid queues, but now you are hunting for the most human-looking button on the screen.

• Talk to an agent
• Transfer to a human
• I need more help

You click, without guilt.

The moment you give up and call for a human

The chatbot replies

I will transfer you to a human agent

The estimated waiting time is a few minutes

While you wait, please confirm your full name, email, phone number, account number, and the reason for your contact

You stare at the screen

I already told you all that, but fine, you are already inside the funnel of goodwill, so you type everything again.

This time, this complete data package may land on someone's screen.

After a reasonable wait, a person finally appears.

Hello, good evening, my name is Peter. How can I help you today?

You feel almost relieved.

Now we are getting somewhere.

You explain the story again, with details.

You mention what you already tried.

You say you read the articles the bot suggested.

You describe the problem from start to finish, including dates, numbers, and screenshots.

Silence for a few seconds.

Then the message arrives.

Before I continue, can you please tell me your full name, email, phone number, account number, and the reason for your contact

In that moment, as a user, you want to close the tab.

As a product designer, you want to frame this entire flow as a case study titled "How to show that nothing in your system talks to anything else".

From our side of the screen, the feeling is simple.

Everything you wrote to the chatbot did not count.

That conversation was just a warm-up, not the actual service.

On the other side, the human agent is probably working in a system that has no connection with the chat.

No shared context, no history, no view of what you already answered.

So they have to ask again, not because they enjoy torture, but because the service was designed like a collection of islands.

The result is exquisite in its own strange way.

The company sells automatic service, promises speed, advertises artificial intelligence, and then makes you repeat your name, your phone number, your email, and your entire story, as if nothing had been recorded helpfully.

The silent message to the user is something like this: Please trust us enough to tell us everything twice, but do not expect us to remember what you said the first time.

From a product perspective, the failure is not the chatbot itself.

The real issue is the decision to put a robot in front of a process that is still entirely manual, fragmented, and disconnected behind the scenes.

The chatbot collects data.

The agent collects data again.

The systems do not share context.

The journey does not behave like a single flow.

It is automation used as a cosmetic layer, not as a bridge.

For the business, this often looks like a detail.

As if asking again was harmless.

It is not.

Every repetition taxes user patience, trust, and the goodwill that makes people honest in the first place.

What a minimum level of respect for the conversation would look like?

You do not need advanced artificial intelligence to fix this scene.

You only need a fundamental respect for continuity.

When the human agent joins the chat, they should already see:

• who the person is
• What the bot asked
• What the person answered
• What is the contact reason
• Which solutions were already suggested

Then the first message from the agent could sound like this:

Hi Wagner, I see that you tried to update your account details and received an error message, I will check this for you

Same technology, same team, completely different experience.

The conversation feels like one continuous thread, picked up by a different voice, not like a restart.

A good chatbot is not the one that sounds smart.

It is the one that does not make you feel you are back at the beginning of the queue every time a human appears.

In the end, the culture speaks louder than the bot. The problem is not the user who asks for a human.

Not the agent who repeats questions.

Not even the chatbot that only follows its script.

The real signal is cultural.

If the journey does not respect the memory of the conversation, the company is telling you exactly how it thinks about your time and your trust.

As a product designer, this is less a joke about technology and more an obvious message about priorities.

You can have the latest chatbot in the world.

If your systems do not talk to each other and your human team never sees what the bot has already collected, you are not doing automation.

You are doing theatre.

And the audience, sooner or later, will stop clapping.