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Well, I don't like to call customer service but prefer that to a chatbot any day of the week. If I want to return something or let them know about some issues

Well, I don't like to call customer service but prefer that to a chatbot any day of the week. If I want to return something or let them know about some issues with my purchase, I'd like to talk to someone on the other side of the aisle. I'd hate to "talk" to a chatbot and waste time trying to get to a human representative. Heck, I highly doubt this would work for old people, angry people, etc... I could see a company selling its products with "100% human touch" as a marketing gimmick.

Legend2440 3y ago
Current-gen customer service chatbots are pretty bad. But I could see something ChatGPT-level working in 95% of cases. Right now this doesn't work because of issues like prompt injection, difficulty of training on company data, etc. But I expect these limitations will be worked out over the next 5-10 years.
- coffeebeqn 3y ago
  But chat gpt has lied to me in almost every session I’ve had with it. How will that work when it promises hundreds or thousands of customers something it hallucinated?
CSMastermind 3y ago
I think that at least part of my dislike of chatbots is that they force you to navigate an often poorly thought out decision tree in order to try and accomplish something. When you talk to a human they're often navigating the same decision tree but they're acting as an interpretation layer to translate your natural language into the specific series of commands the machine they're working with will accept. It seems likely to me that an LLM would be able to provide that functionality.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  Doesn't always matter that you're talking to a human. Like when you call Comcast with internet trouble, and you tell them you've already rebooted the router but they make you do it again anyway because that's the first step in their tree and they aren't allowed to skip it.
devjab 3y ago
When companies we deal with don’t offer human phone support I tend to call their enterprise sales departments and have them transfer me to someone who can help. I think the furthest I’ve gotten was once where I pulled the cell phone number of some CEO off their LinkedIn and called them directly because everything else had failed. As long as you’re extremely politely annoying it works every time in my experience. I imagine the AI is meant to replace the type of call centers that are as useless as an e-mail form or a chatbot, but I don’t personally believe in something that useless. I mean, what’s the benefit? To make people who aren’t stubborn idiots go away with unresolved issues?

Legend2440 3y ago

Current-gen customer service chatbots are pretty bad. But I could see something ChatGPT-level working in 95% of cases. Right now this doesn't work because of issues like prompt injection, difficulty of training on company data, etc. But I expect these limitations will be worked out over the next 5-10 years.

coffeebeqn 3y ago
But chat gpt has lied to me in almost every session I’ve had with it. How will that work when it promises hundreds or thousands of customers something it hallucinated?

CSMastermind 3y ago

I think that at least part of my dislike of chatbots is that they force you to navigate an often poorly thought out decision tree in order to try and accomplish something. When you talk to a human they're often navigating the same decision tree but they're acting as an interpretation layer to translate your natural language into the specific series of commands the machine they're working with will accept. It seems likely to me that an LLM would be able to provide that functionality.

SoftTalker 3y ago
Doesn't always matter that you're talking to a human. Like when you call Comcast with internet trouble, and you tell them you've already rebooted the router but they make you do it again anyway because that's the first step in their tree and they aren't allowed to skip it.

devjab 3y ago

When companies we deal with don’t offer human phone support I tend to call their enterprise sales departments and have them transfer me to someone who can help. I think the furthest I’ve gotten was once where I pulled the cell phone number of some CEO off their LinkedIn and called them directly because everything else had failed. As long as you’re extremely politely annoying it works every time in my experience. I imagine the AI is meant to replace the type of call centers that are as useless as an e-mail form or a chatbot, but I don’t personally believe in something that useless. I mean, what’s the benefit? To make people who aren’t stubborn idiots go away with unresolved issues?