It is now at the point where we need to ask how they plan on handling complaints and problems. And if the answer is not correct, go somewhere else. Up till now this was never something we needed to worry about
Around my way, we have a pizza chain where they’ve began utilizing AI to take orders over the phone. The only screw up the AI made was that at first, before the process of taking our order down, it wanted to confirm that we live within the delivery distance, so we provided our home address and it verified that we were within range of delivery, after taking the order and repeating it back to us, including that the order will be delivered to our home address (providing the details of the home address) within a certain time range, the moment it asked us if this information is correct, we said yes and then a long pause, and it responded that it could not verify our home address.
Wat.
And because we decided to speak to a human, it apparently dumped the entire order and the person who answered our call did not have access to all the details we provided the AI.
Pretty much wasted a little over 5 minutes with the AI.
If they’re using AI to answer their phones surely they have a website right? Who under the age of 40 is actually calling a pizza place to order?
Me…it’s literally cheaper to call then use the internet to order. Try comparing the in-house menu, to the bullshit apps, to the website menu to calling and asking for a deal.
Calling is always cheaper especially if you pickup.
I also refuse to use any automated system. 0#0#0#0#0#0# or I keep saying human, representative, human human until the shiity programmed not gives up. Worst case, I actually go to the business in person.
The internet and companies is broken beyond belief.
under the age of 40
I’m pushing 50 and I won’t call if there’s a website…
I had the displeasure of being called by one from a vendor. It pissed me off that they couldn’t be bothered to pick up the phone and call using a human, with how much we paid them. I canceled that contract and went with a different vendor, and let the sales team know exactly why. LLMs have their place, but my time is not the waste bin.
Completely off topic, but I sang your username in my head… It really is weirdly catchy…
Hahahahaha!! I was sitting there, on the Pick Username screen for a good 5 minutes, singing that song in my head, trying to think of a good username. After a while, I thought to myself, “that’s a good enough username, in done thinking about this”, and sang it out loud as I typed it in… 3
Automated phone systems have been a thing for decades. They are notoriously shitty and adding a layer of “friendly AI” on top of that shitty system doesn’t bode well.
They’re usually built for the lowest bidder.
and that’s even before it has to contend with you having an accent, or the mic quality being anything less than crystal clear, with a perfect connection.
The point of modern “customer service” is to NOT provide customer service. If you can drag out the conversation to the point where the caller rage-quits in frustration, then the company can avoid spending any money on fixing any problems they’ve caused.
Previous way for companies to cut down on customer support costs was to make a better quality product (making support interactions rarer). That is not so much the philosophy anymore.
It’s also similar to scammers. When you are not quite certain if you’ve been scammed, you’ll first ask. There’s a percentage of cases where you won’t bother for the sum, because you’ve used the energy on pinging them.
While in case of companies you could have used that energy to, say, post “X is crap” somewhere in the Web.
Depends on whether scammers will also use a similar AI system to do their job for them. If they do, they might be basically indistinguishable.
This is how companies that don’t have competition act. This is how most companies act. We need more anti-trust enforcement.
The worst is the "in order to free up queue space, please try your call another time. Hangs up "
I’ve not heard of that before. That’s insane.
Gov agencies that don’t like answering questions do this a lot.
This is how companies act even if they have competition. Because the competition is doing it, too.
Tbf most consumers hate all customer service.
While I’d prefer to just speak to a human, I’d much prefer AI over the status quo of dead dumb automated systems that just keep looping through the same preset options until you get enraged and give up or mash zero
What if it’s a dead dumb human? My god the moment I know I’m talking to someone in a sweat shop in Mumbai I know I’m not going to get a lot of support
The companies will profit again now with your voice being used to train AI
An exceptionally well trained AI customer service has the potential to be amazing.
I only call or try to chat/email with customer service if something has gone way wrong - like outside the typical customer service capability of assistance.
If an AI can realize that my problem is human worthy and escalate it faster, that would save me time in the chat queue talking with someone who barely knows my native language.
Alas, AIs will be poorly trained, so the bad-english CS reps will still be right behind the AI interface waiting for me.
It won’t. It’s a glorified faq
The other day I was able to take care of what I thought was a reasonably complicated customer service issue through an automated assistant.
I take a daily prescription medication and it’s on automatic refill. However now and then I forget to take my pill and then I have an extra. After years of this I found myself with 20-30 pills left when my next bottle was ready.
So I tried to call the pharmacy and say hey that bottle of pills you have waiting for me? I still need it, but not for about 3 weeks. Can you push my entire schedule back that much but otherwise keep the pace the same?
Turned out I was able to do this just by listening to menus, selecting from multiple choice, and entering numbers for dates.
I was so satisfied! I don’t want to talk to a human if I can possibly help it. I’d much rather deal with an automated system as long as it can do what’s needed. The problem is that most of them can’t. But then again most customer service humans are useless too, so…
It would be so much better to just have a website with all of those outions. Why does it need to be a phone system at all? I hate calling in, I just want to enter an identifier of some sort and click a couple buttons…
Yeah that’s an excellent point. Older generations still prefer phone calls but I imagine increasingly the only people who want to call will be the people who can’t fix their issue via an automated system.
Yup. I’m pretty good at avoiding talking to people, yet I’ve needed to call in a few times recently for stuff I should’ve been able to handle online:
- report fraud
- cancel credit card
- report internet outage
- buy insurance
If they want to save money on customer support, make the customer support less necessary to get routine tasks done…
Because they are not trying to design an efficient system. They are trying to design a system that is as cheep as possible, puts off as many customers as possible from interacting with it while not being so bad as to fall foul of regulations. A well designed website that efficiently took you to the right place to make your complaint and get money from them/make them do something would fail requirement 2.
My belief is that this is an unhinged take.
AI can only give you the options it was programmed to give. A Human is able to actually think and find a solution or direct you to a solution. Your options are less with AI for customer service. AI works best for applications that it is tailored for. But expecting it to “think” like Humans do is so far off. AI is being fed so much biased information and that is not “thinking” or learning.
Exactly! If I am calling customer support, it’s because I have exhausted all other options of finding a solution to my issue, and I have a feeling I’m searching more extensively than the options that this AI is being fed. If I’ve reached the point of calling, I need someone that can think of a creative solution.
it can give you other options too.
I went through a phase of making the ai robot agree with me that it was the “email flange” that was causing my issue before transferring me to an operator.
To be honest ai could replace Microsoft support. Be it on chat or forums.
- Restart
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth- ???, I gave up with support and just reinstalled
could have told you this considering they also hated the days of “press or say your issue now”.
Y’all do understand that customer service is not there for the “service” part ;)
Companies don’t want to provide actual service for problems. That costs money. They want you to give up.
Customers hate anything that actually gets between them and someone that can actually help. Not shitty, complicated automated phone menus. Not some underpaid stooge who refuses to da anything except read from a mandatory customer service script. And not AI, which will combine both of the worst aspects of automation and scripted service along with a cheerful idiot that will spare no effort to direct you away from the nearest actual assistance.
Let’s be honest here: they want a human to abuse. They want to be shitty to and verbally assault someone that they view as being “lower” than them. If the AI works well (a different conversation) then people will get over any trepidation they have rather quickly. The people that are legitimately upset will just miss having someone to put down for “only” working customer service.
Let’s be honest here: they hate that the companies are jerking them around and using bullshit programs to cause even more problems, instead of employing people to solve the problems.
You have a trauma history in customer service? What are you on about? This isn’t why people are calling customer service.
Or maybe they just want their issues resolved.
Most people using customer service aren’t assholes.
Ooh, there’s a fun question:
Would you rather:
An AI handle customer service, or
An overseas call center handle customer service
?
Depends. Can I easily make the AI hallucinate and give me free shit/tell me something I can later use to get free shit?
iirc someone attempted that already with plane tickets
As it should be. The consumer doesn’t care why the support agent offered something, if it’s offered and advertised, the customer should get it. They can fix their support if it’s costing them too much.
