Best Of

I would love to see Blackbaud's data on how many users are being helped by the chatbot responses, I have never had an issue resolved by it. I'm always reaching out to tech support because I cannot find the answer after searching the knowledgebase, community forum posts, and googling my issue. It is extremely frustrating to be experiencing a system error and know that my only option is to waste time jumping through AI hoops, then talking to an agent who usually also can't assist. I have spent hours trying to get someone at Blackbaud tech support to understand and care about the issue rather than just sending me knowledgebase articles I've already read. They also close tickets without resolving the issue.

Please bring back the sound notification when an agent responds. Without it, we're forced to either keep the chat window open to monitor it or keep switching back and forth to check, which could lead to forgetting about it. This makes corresponding with your agents unnecessarily tedious, preventing us from progressing on other important work while waiting for a response.

@Tatyana Leifman if you select the option to "Talk to an Agent" then there will be no prompt afterwards asking if it was helpful.

I know that there is a lot of pressure from senior leadership - everywhere! - to look current and cutting-edge by shoving LLMs into everything, but I truly cannot emphasize enough that it simply does not fit the bill here. A technical, multi-vector product whose users are both frontend and backend cannot be served by automated customer service (let alone the statistically-likely-word-blender of LLMs), and the insistence that you just need to "improve" the product for it to be of use shows that the decision-makers do not understand how or why your customers use your customer service.

Please, genuinely, consider taking the budget and effort that is currently going into the chatbot and redirecting it to training and supporting the agents. That is where you are actually falling short, because that is what people actually need.

I've been using the AI chatbot for a few weeks and it has yet to solve an issue for me. In fact, I've had better luck just Googling issues or using Google AI. I'm getting kind of tired of "Check out our awesome, helpful AI that we developed for your benefit". No, you developed it so you can continue to eliminate jobs in your customer service department while still charging your customers for customer service. AI is just the newest outsource. The only people this will excite is your stock holders.

@Kevin Campbell we have been working on allowing a sound notification when a response is sent by the Virtual Assistant or an agent. When this feature or any additional features are made available, we will communicate in the Community.

I haven't found the AI assistant to be helpful either. Have not gotten one answer from it ever, have always had to transfer to a human. However, this is just the direction things are going, and we aren't going to convince Blackbaud otherwise (or any other company for that matter). So instead of complaining, I encourage everyone provide what feedback Blackbaud could use to actually improve it.

I agree with @Lee Grisham that the tiny inset chat window is a subpar experience. I'd prefer it to be a full-page chat experience.

I'd also like there to be an option at the beginning of the AI prompt where you can indicate if you have already checked the knowledgebase and can also supply the KB articles numbers you have already referenced. If I'm coming to chat support, I've already researched the issue in the KB and not found the answer/help I needed. 99% of the time, we're coming to chat support with an issue, not a "how to" question anyway. The chat bot usually spits out a few KB articles for you to review, but they are always something I've already read. Allowing me the opportunity to offer that info up ahead of time would be very helpful.

I'm fine with AI prompts, but the previous ones (Admin task, add/remove user, etc) were not very helpful. Those are not typically why we are coming to chat support. It would be great if Blackbaud could work with clients to determine the most common "categories" of things they come to chat support for. I am thinking the initial prompt could offer up options like: System Down, Receiving error message, How-To question. Things like that. From there, I feel like the bot could maybe narrow down the information a little better and possibly determine earlier if you need to be transferred to an agent (without running you through more and more prompts).

Finally, this last one has to do with the live human agents… Blackbaud - please work more with the agents. For a large number of us who are coming to chat support, we know the products very well. When we get connected with an agent who does not know the system at even a rudimentary level, it is very obvious and very frustrating. It is clear to us that they are simply looking up our question/issue in the Knowledgebase and regurgitating information there. Additionally, please train them to read what we are writing. It is very frustrating to write an explanation for a live agent only for them to not read it. It's obvious when they aren't reading it. They will ask me questions I've already answered, tell me to take steps I've already listed that I've done, and tell me to read KB articles I've already explained that I've looked at. On many, many occasions, I've simply had to tell the agent to go back and read what I have already written. It's a waste of both their time and mine. This would be an easy improvement to make that would drastically improve the customer experience.

I will be interested to see if the improvements that have been made ease the process for assistance. When I contact support its an issue that is occurring in real time, and going through the bot, has not been helpful. I am then transferred to a human. Additional time is taken waiting to speak to that person and explaining the issue again.

I understand efficiency is your goal, however, it doesn't seem that way when it's a multi process for assistance.

Congratulations to the new 2026 All-Stars! Looking forward to being in community with you! Yesss All-Stars @Sara Niemiec @Lauren Henderson @Rochelle Toomer and @Faith Murray 😎