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I think your opinion stems from never having dealt with normal people interfacing with a technical product. They're not asking the same questions you or I might

I think your opinion stems from never having dealt with normal people interfacing with a technical product. They're not asking the same questions you or I might, they're asking documented questions and they're doing it in obscene volume, with such little ability to help themselves. ISPs probably take the cup for worst ratio of technical issues to technical idiots. It's not just a modem, there's a line, an internal network and a really bothersome user all working against optimal service. Your desire to handle that all in-house by organic, corn-fed, English-as-their-first-language meat-bags is lovely but you'd be bankrupt in a week. This isn't new. We've had customer service levels for decades. What happened before is you talked to non-technical staff following scripts before escalation. Then that model pushed those staff overseas. Now the lowest rung is a LLM. The trick they have to re-learn when to let the user tell you to step back and fetch a real person. That, and getting the tone of the LLM to not declare everything as if that'll definitely fix the problem.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
AnimalMuppet 2y ago
My dad's ISP did exactly what you say is impossible. It was a small ISP in Salt Lake City (xmission, if anyone cares). They had actual humans answering the phone, and no bankruptcies.
- icedchai 2y ago
  I worked for a small ISP in the mid 90's and we did the same. The only reason this worked is because back then, barely anyone was online. And many of the people who were online were technically sophisticated early adopters that needed less support. Today's world is very different.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  Most of the companies I've worked for have been the same, and my personal companies as well. The financial reality that I've experienced is that customer service is a very expensive, and it doesn't take long for a call to use up your profit margin. But good customer service pays dividends in the long run even if it appears to be a loss in the short. In cold money terms, it's not an expense, it's an investment.
syncbehind 2y ago
>Your desire to handle that all in-house by organic, corn-fed, English-as-their-first-language meat-bags is lovely but you'd be bankrupt in a week. This sentiment is, in essence, the problem. It's perfectly logical for this trend of distancing customers from their , as you put it, "all in-house by organic, corn-fed, English-as-their-first-language-meat-bags" when you start with the core concept that the _only_ purpose of a company is to earn capital.
- indymike 2y ago
  > core concept that the _only_ purpose of a company is to earn capital. There seems to be an inverse relationship between size of company and quality of service. The bigger the company I suspect that great service is not as likely to lead to a positive gain for the company - especially at near monopoly scale. A new sale has little value to the monopoly, while a new sale for the small biz might put payroll over the top for next pay period.
- stale2002 2y ago
  > the core concept that the _only_ purpose of a company is to earn capital. Companies or organizations in general, won't survive if their costs are too high. There is nothing prescriptive about it. It is a merely a description of market dynamics. You can have whatever value system you wants and you can burn money doing whatever you want, but a value system doesn't change the reality of market dynamics. And no amount of blaming all problems on nebulous ideas like "capitalism" changes that either. You can either recognize reality or enjoy bankruptcy. Your choice!
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  > when you start with the core concept that the _only_ purpose of a company is to earn capital. ...Yes? That's literally what a corporation is for. That some might have good customer service is simply a marketing method to get people to continue using that company to, in the end, earn capital. If you want to run a service whose primary motive is not earning capital, create a non profit.
  - jdbernard 2y ago
Workaccount2 2y ago
Imagine something like a credit score but for technological adeptness. A high score and you can reliably get an on prem human and even sometimes an engineer. A low score and you just get endless bots. Average and you get the current system.
- oliwarner 2y ago
  Indeed. A good service system will ask that. I've had that for technical equipment ("Are you a buyer, installer, operator, etc?"). And hey, it'd be nice if that translated into a lower price but I won't pretend that us geeks don't cause as many problems as we eventually fix.
JohnFen 2y ago
If the first contact I can have with support is an LLM, that's the same as not providing support. Even talking to non-technical staff following scripts first, as obnoxious as that is, is preferable. The only reason that I'm calling support in the first place is because web searching and their automated systems have failed me. I may not be the standard customer, but that's not my problem. If that matters, all that's saying is that the company doesn't want me as a customer.
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  No it actually can be done competently, believe it or not. The best example of this I've seen is Swisscom. Swisscom has a customer support bot, they call it "Sam". Sam is amazing and a lesson to all other companies in how to automate customer support. 1. Sam tells you it's a bot. They don't hide what they're doing. 2. Sam is optional. You can choose to call human support at any time. 3. If you agree to always try chatting to Sam first they cut you in on the savings, and reduce your monthly bill. The reduction is big enough to be definitely worth it, it's not 10 cents a month or anything like that. 4. Sam escalates quickly and voluntarily if it can't work out how to answer your question. It doesn't try and block you from talking with a person. 5. Sam is astonishingly good at actually answering questions. I don't know what tech they're using for this; it seems like some sort of really souped up LLM with great RAG, maybe. Whatever it is, it works. Several times I've contacted Swisscom support and gone through Sam, and it did in fact solve my problem. 6. All the above is true even though I'm interacting with Sam in English, which is not a Swiss national language. Truly, this is what a good bot-supported contact experience should be like. Of course in most cases institutions don't do such a good job, and just become frustrating. Bots that pretend to be human, bots that don't seem to know the answers to anything, bots that make it as hard as possible to escalate and of course in the end ... nothing in it for the customer to put up with that. But if Swisscom can do it then other companies can too, there's nothing magical about this use case. My assumption is that after a while we're going to find that most people actually prefer bot driven support experiences, same as how they came to prefer self checkout at supermarkets, ATMs at banks etc.
Tao3300 2y ago
> Your desire to handle that all in-house by organic, corn-fed, English-as-their-first-language meat-bags is lovely but you'd be bankrupt in a week. Nah, the C-suite fat cats just need to take a few million less for running a shitty business, and use the money to hire people who actually have to do stuff for customers.
ryandrake 2y ago
> Your desire to handle that all in-house by organic, corn-fed, English-as-their-first-language meat-bags is lovely but you'd be bankrupt in a week. Or, the ISP/shareholders would have to accept slightly lower profits. I know, I know, this is totally unspeakable here, but might as well at least list the option for completeness.
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  You aren't getting it. The difference isn't between "high profits" and "slightly lower profits". For most businesses it's between small profits and large losses.
  - yencabulator 2y ago
    Oh won't anyone think of the small profits of the large corporations! AT&T 2023 revenue was $122.4 billion. https://about.att.com/story/2024/q4-earnings-2023.html https://about.att.com/story/2024/q4-earnings-2023.html
    - mike_hearn 2y ago
      Why are you quoting a revenue figure but talking about profits? AT&T has a profit margin currently of about 11%, which is around the average profit margin across all industries. It isn't a particularly profitable business. Not the worst, but also far from the best. In a company like that profitability can be very volatile. Small changes in the per-user cost can wipe out all profits overnight, which is why it's common for companies with billions in revenue to suddenly flip from net profit to net loss. That happened to AT&T in Q4 2022 when they went from a +17% margin to -7% in the space of a single quarter. They didn't start making profits again until a year later.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

AnimalMuppet 2y ago

My dad's ISP did exactly what you say is impossible. It was a small ISP in Salt Lake City (xmission, if anyone cares). They had actual humans answering the phone, and no bankruptcies.

icedchai 2y ago
I worked for a small ISP in the mid 90's and we did the same. The only reason this worked is because back then, barely anyone was online. And many of the people who were online were technically sophisticated early adopters that needed less support. Today's world is very different.
JohnFen 2y ago
Most of the companies I've worked for have been the same, and my personal companies as well. The financial reality that I've experienced is that customer service is a very expensive, and it doesn't take long for a call to use up your profit margin. But good customer service pays dividends in the long run even if it appears to be a loss in the short. In cold money terms, it's not an expense, it's an investment.

syncbehind 2y ago

>Your desire to handle that all in-house by organic, corn-fed, English-as-their-first-language meat-bags is lovely but you'd be bankrupt in a week. This sentiment is, in essence, the problem. It's perfectly logical for this trend of distancing customers from their , as you put it, "all in-house by organic, corn-fed, English-as-their-first-language-meat-bags" when you start with the core concept that the _only_ purpose of a company is to earn capital.

indymike 2y ago
> core concept that the _only_ purpose of a company is to earn capital. There seems to be an inverse relationship between size of company and quality of service. The bigger the company I suspect that great service is not as likely to lead to a positive gain for the company - especially at near monopoly scale. A new sale has little value to the monopoly, while a new sale for the small biz might put payroll over the top for next pay period.
stale2002 2y ago
> the core concept that the _only_ purpose of a company is to earn capital. Companies or organizations in general, won't survive if their costs are too high. There is nothing prescriptive about it. It is a merely a description of market dynamics. You can have whatever value system you wants and you can burn money doing whatever you want, but a value system doesn't change the reality of market dynamics. And no amount of blaming all problems on nebulous ideas like "capitalism" changes that either. You can either recognize reality or enjoy bankruptcy. Your choice!
satvikpendem 2y ago
> when you start with the core concept that the _only_ purpose of a company is to earn capital. ...Yes? That's literally what a corporation is for. That some might have good customer service is simply a marketing method to get people to continue using that company to, in the end, earn capital. If you want to run a service whose primary motive is not earning capital, create a non profit.
- jdbernard 2y ago

Workaccount2 2y ago

Imagine something like a credit score but for technological adeptness. A high score and you can reliably get an on prem human and even sometimes an engineer. A low score and you just get endless bots. Average and you get the current system.

oliwarner 2y ago
Indeed. A good service system will ask that. I've had that for technical equipment ("Are you a buyer, installer, operator, etc?"). And hey, it'd be nice if that translated into a lower price but I won't pretend that us geeks don't cause as many problems as we eventually fix.

JohnFen 2y ago

If the first contact I can have with support is an LLM, that's the same as not providing support. Even talking to non-technical staff following scripts first, as obnoxious as that is, is preferable. The only reason that I'm calling support in the first place is because web searching and their automated systems have failed me. I may not be the standard customer, but that's not my problem. If that matters, all that's saying is that the company doesn't want me as a customer.

mike_hearn 2y ago
No it actually can be done competently, believe it or not. The best example of this I've seen is Swisscom. Swisscom has a customer support bot, they call it "Sam". Sam is amazing and a lesson to all other companies in how to automate customer support. 1. Sam tells you it's a bot. They don't hide what they're doing. 2. Sam is optional. You can choose to call human support at any time. 3. If you agree to always try chatting to Sam first they cut you in on the savings, and reduce your monthly bill. The reduction is big enough to be definitely worth it, it's not 10 cents a month or anything like that. 4. Sam escalates quickly and voluntarily if it can't work out how to answer your question. It doesn't try and block you from talking with a person. 5. Sam is astonishingly good at actually answering questions. I don't know what tech they're using for this; it seems like some sort of really souped up LLM with great RAG, maybe. Whatever it is, it works. Several times I've contacted Swisscom support and gone through Sam, and it did in fact solve my problem. 6. All the above is true even though I'm interacting with Sam in English, which is not a Swiss national language. Truly, this is what a good bot-supported contact experience should be like. Of course in most cases institutions don't do such a good job, and just become frustrating. Bots that pretend to be human, bots that don't seem to know the answers to anything, bots that make it as hard as possible to escalate and of course in the end ... nothing in it for the customer to put up with that. But if Swisscom can do it then other companies can too, there's nothing magical about this use case. My assumption is that after a while we're going to find that most people actually prefer bot driven support experiences, same as how they came to prefer self checkout at supermarkets, ATMs at banks etc.

Tao3300 2y ago

> Your desire to handle that all in-house by organic, corn-fed, English-as-their-first-language meat-bags is lovely but you'd be bankrupt in a week. Nah, the C-suite fat cats just need to take a few million less for running a shitty business, and use the money to hire people who actually have to do stuff for customers.

ryandrake 2y ago

> Your desire to handle that all in-house by organic, corn-fed, English-as-their-first-language meat-bags is lovely but you'd be bankrupt in a week. Or, the ISP/shareholders would have to accept slightly lower profits. I know, I know, this is totally unspeakable here, but might as well at least list the option for completeness.

mike_hearn 2y ago
You aren't getting it. The difference isn't between "high profits" and "slightly lower profits". For most businesses it's between small profits and large losses.
- yencabulator 2y ago
  Oh won't anyone think of the small profits of the large corporations! AT&T 2023 revenue was $122.4 billion. https://about.att.com/story/2024/q4-earnings-2023.html https://about.att.com/story/2024/q4-earnings-2023.html
  - mike_hearn 2y ago
    Why are you quoting a revenue figure but talking about profits? AT&T has a profit margin currently of about 11%, which is around the average profit margin across all industries. It isn't a particularly profitable business. Not the worst, but also far from the best. In a company like that profitability can be very volatile. Small changes in the per-user cost can wipe out all profits overnight, which is why it's common for companies with billions in revenue to suddenly flip from net profit to net loss. That happened to AT&T in Q4 2022 when they went from a +17% margin to -7% in the space of a single quarter. They didn't start making profits again until a year later.