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If talking to an ai is the cost of not being put on hold for 20 min for the simplest request so be it. Honestly I welcome ai customer service. Most of the time

by bko 4y ago

If talking to an ai is the cost of not being put on hold for 20 min for the simplest request so be it. Honestly I welcome ai customer service. Most of the time it's just something super simple i want to do.

toss1 4y ago
"If" is doing a LOT of work in that comment I have never seen nor heard of any "ai" system for customer service that remotely approaches a barely competent human, and those are frustrating and annoying enough. ChatGPT4-level systems may be able to get much closer if they are provided the training set, and if they can, then great. BUT, the absolutely need to be able to figure out when they are at the limit of their knowledge/ability, and then hand-off to a human. ChatGPT4 has been spectacularly unable to do anything even close to this; and it actually just starts fabricating bullcrap in a highly confident voice. Corporate managers are already no good, horrible, awful, terrible at actually providing service, as it seems their only goal is to provide a cursory appearance of service and reduce their human costs. (Incidentally, this also massively misses the opportunity to gather excellent data on where their company could improve it's product/service and gain market share.) "AI" will only exacerbate the trend until several generations in the future when it is actually good enough, and it may become a competitive advantage to provide better service.
- IggleSniggle 4y ago
  > a barely competent human My problem hasn't been getting a barely competent human, it's been getting a barely competent human (or better) that also has the correct authority for my situation. Unfortunately, in the case of both AI or humans, unlocking the person that has both the correct competence and the correct level of authority to correct a problem is the hard part. If it was resolvable with the automated system, I already tried those steps. If it's not, there's often a reason (for the company, and not necessarily a good one) that it's not. And that's where the authority part comes in; if the AI (or the call person) is doing the "figuring out" of the technical part of a problem but passes the authority on to someone without that knowledge, then how can the person with authority possibly provide authorization without first lending their authority to the end-user support provider? Ultimately, the reason you can't do the things you need to do is because someone in management removed the authority of that end-user support provide to give it; that will still be true in the case of competent AI, and you'll probably have even less recourse since there is no person to advocate for you to the authority on your behalf.

by bko 4y ago

toss1 4y ago

"If" is doing a LOT of work in that comment I have never seen nor heard of any "ai" system for customer service that remotely approaches a barely competent human, and those are frustrating and annoying enough. ChatGPT4-level systems may be able to get much closer if they are provided the training set, and if they can, then great. BUT, the absolutely need to be able to figure out when they are at the limit of their knowledge/ability, and then hand-off to a human. ChatGPT4 has been spectacularly unable to do anything even close to this; and it actually just starts fabricating bullcrap in a highly confident voice. Corporate managers are already no good, horrible, awful, terrible at actually providing service, as it seems their only goal is to provide a cursory appearance of service and reduce their human costs. (Incidentally, this also massively misses the opportunity to gather excellent data on where their company could improve it's product/service and gain market share.) "AI" will only exacerbate the trend until several generations in the future when it is actually good enough, and it may become a competitive advantage to provide better service.

IggleSniggle 4y ago
> a barely competent human My problem hasn't been getting a barely competent human, it's been getting a barely competent human (or better) that also has the correct authority for my situation. Unfortunately, in the case of both AI or humans, unlocking the person that has both the correct competence and the correct level of authority to correct a problem is the hard part. If it was resolvable with the automated system, I already tried those steps. If it's not, there's often a reason (for the company, and not necessarily a good one) that it's not. And that's where the authority part comes in; if the AI (or the call person) is doing the "figuring out" of the technical part of a problem but passes the authority on to someone without that knowledge, then how can the person with authority possibly provide authorization without first lending their authority to the end-user support provider? Ultimately, the reason you can't do the things you need to do is because someone in management removed the authority of that end-user support provide to give it; that will still be true in the case of competent AI, and you'll probably have even less recourse since there is no person to advocate for you to the authority on your behalf.