Technology

I fully support that shift to AI customer service, on the condition that everything their AI support bot says is considered legally binding.

AI is worse for the company than outsourcing overseas to underpaid call centers. That is how bad AI is at replacing people right now.

The transition to an AI-focused business world is proving to be far more challenging than initially anticipated.

No shit, Sherlock.

Hilariously, many of these companies already fired staff because their execs and upper management drank the Flavor-Aid. Now they need to spend even more rehiring in local markets where word has got round.

I’m so sad for them. Look, I’m crying 😂

Well yeah, when ai started to give people info so wrong it cost the companies money this was going to happen.

Can we get our customer service off of "X former know as Twitter" too while we're at it?

I called the local HVAC company and they had an AI rep. The thing literally couldn't even schedule an appointment and I couldn't get it to transfer me to a human. I called someone else. They never even called me back so they probably don't even know they lost my business.

Thank fucking christ. Now hopefully the AI bubble with burst along with it and I don't have to listen to techbros drone on about how it's going to replace everything which is definitely something you do not want to happen in a world where we sell our ability to work in exchange for money, goods and services.

The good thing: half of them have come to their senses.

The bad thing: half of them haven't.

So providing NO assistance to customers turned out to be a bad idea?

THE MOST UNPREDICTABLE OUTCOME IN THE HISTORY OF CUSTOMER SERVICE!

I hope they all go under. I've no sympathy for them and I wish nothing but the worst for them.

I’m frankly amazed this many of them realized the sheer idiocy of their decision.

My company gets a lot of incoming chats from customers (and potential customers)

The challenge of this side of the business is 98% of the questions asked over chat are already answered on the very website that person started the chat from. Like it's all written right there!

So real human chat agents are reduced to copy paste monkeys in most interactions.

But here's the rub. The people asking the questions fit into one of two groups: not smart or patient enough to read (unfortunate waste of our resources) or they are checking whether our business has real humans and is responsive before they buy.

It's that latter group for whom we must keep red blooded, educated and service minded humans on the job to respond, and this is where small companies can really kick ass next to behemoths like google who bring in over $1m per employee but still can't seem to afford a phone line to support your account with them.

I spent 25 years on this planet without the need for an actual Ai, I’ve used Siri when she was dumb to make quick phone calls or to turn lights off but other than that I really don’t need to know the last digit to Pi.

Surprised pikachu face

how many bags of popcorn can we eat before the other half panic, pivot hard or go out of business?

It's always funny how companies who want to adopt some new flashy tech never listen to specialists who understand if something is even worth a single cent, and they always fell on their stupid face.

I will note that AI customer service could be an improvement. Customer service helpline jobs are one of the worst jobs to get paid peanuts to do.

Of course, my preference is to upgrade the crap voice recognition system with an AI voice recognition system, which is way better at understanding words. The help desk jockeys can stay, as they do the real work.

…and the other half insists on learning the hard way.