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>And it keeps being pushed on customers because it's beneficial for corporations: customers will fruitlessly navigate chat support rather than realizing they sh

• mystified5016 2y ago
  It reduces costs in the short term by firing all your customer support staff. There is no long term in modern capitalism.
• ninkendo 2y ago
  That’s true in theory, I’m not sure about in practice. It could also be the case that a company says “human support is too expensive, throw in a chat bot to stem the tide”, see the number of calls drop, and call it a success. Never mind how many potential customers are lost (which actually requires competence to measure.)
• rsynnott 2y ago
  That's a _long-term_ problem, though. This would be far from the first time that companies prioritise short-term savings over long-term revenue due to perverse incentives. No-one's getting promoted for "declined to ruin our customer support, thus avoiding loss of X recurring revenue per year over the next decade", but they might get promoted for "reduced cost of customer support by X with AI!!!" In the long run the invisible hand will dole out rewards and punishments here, but thinking about the short term is just _easier_ than thinking about the long term.
  • _nalply 2y ago
    > In the long run the invisible hand will dole out rewards and punishments Only in competitive markets.