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Most consumers hate the idea of AI-generated customer service (www.techspot.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 190 points 2 years ago (30 children)

If it worked for most shit and escalated to a human when it actually needed to, reliably, I'd be fine with it.

I don't believe there's a realistic chance that there's a lot of overlap between the people willing to invest to actually do it properly and the people paying for AI instead of people though.

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  • [–] 95 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    The problem is the same as with the telephone answering trees.

    If they’re used to help you get where you’re going, then they’re great. But that’s not the best financially motivated decision. Solving your problem costs the companies money. Pissing you off and convincing you that your problem shouldn’t be fixed saves money on support.

    So making you go round in circles is the machine doing EXACTLY what they want it to do.

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  • [–] 38 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    That's an additional problem.

    But the bigger problem is that it's not actually possible to do a good job without genuine meaningful investment in building out the tooling properly.

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  • [–] 28 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (21 children)

    I get one of those meal kit delivery services. Every few weeks I'll go to their AI customer support and ask for cancellation and it'll give me discounts on upcoming orders. I keep the service at about 40% off at all times. Also when there's a problem with the order the chat bot just tosses me a discount. Cases like this are perfect for AI customer service.

    Edit

    Wow this blew up in a weird way. Just to be clear on a few points:

    With the discount I pay $87 Canadian which is $76 untaxed or about $55usd. I also pay for this service using gift cards from Costco that are 20% off ($100 for $80) bringing that $55 weekly cost down to about $44. For 6 different dinners for me and my wife delivered to my front door every Monday. With crazy grocery prices where I live I cannot come close to beating that without giving up something. I won't eat the same thing every night (Sunday meal prep bros, don't at me), I don't want to expend the mental energy gathering recipes and ingredients but I do enjoy cooking a lot. It's something at the end of the day I can do with my hands free of screens. At regular price this was worth it to me, at 40% off it's actually saving me money. If they're still making money shipping this big box off food to me on a weekly basis, then good for them, we're both coming out on top.

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  • [–] 23 points 2 years ago (11 children)

    Except they're selling you the kit at waaaay over cost in the first place, so they're still making money off of you. I promise you they are aware of the "glitch", and are not ignoring it out of the kindness of their hearts.

    (not criticising you for using the service, if it works for you go for it and get those discounts, but don't let them manipulate you in to thinking you've got one over on them, they 100% account for this kind of thing and are still making money)

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (8 children)

    If X number of people pay full price and only Y number people go through the hoops of getting a discount the company comes out ahead!

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    It's worse then that. They're actively profiting from that discount rate, meaning they're ludicrously profiting from everyone who doesn't spend half their life getting discount codes (the cost of convenience)

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  • [–] -2 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    How is 2 minutes with a chat bot half of someone's life?

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  • [+] 12 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] -3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Yes but the point you're trying to get across is this is a huge amount of effort when it's really trivial.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yea but it works out to $87 (Canadian) for 6 different nights of meals for 2 people. Delivered to my door. I suspect their angle is using this to just keep you from churning at a loss in hopes of just keeping you around in case you go back to paying regular price. The amount of meat, vegetables and dairy in the box along with cost of shipping and paying people to assemble this order, the cost has to be damn near $87 if not a little over.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Like I said, I don't criticise anyone for using the service, and the more affordable it is, the better, but trust that they are definitely not working at a loss, in the same way supermarkets, that would probably still charge less for the same items, do - by making you believe they're selling to you at just about what it costs them to get by, when they are selling it to you for significantly more.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    And it's quite possible that it's cheaper for them to give those discounts since they're not employing as many humans. Humans are expensive.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It's more likely that the food is so cheap that the company still makes money at 40% off. Like how mattresses are always discounted 30% to 70% .

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Dropping pricing down to a reasonable amount by making you jump through hoops instead of pricing it fairly in the first place?

    That is like praising someone for stabbing you instead of shooting you.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I mean, I'm choosing to use this service. If it felt unfair I'd just buy the groceries myself. They're not a charity, you're getting a premium service and there are costs associated with this. I don't think it's priced unfairly to begin with, it falls somewhere between buying your own groceries and getting takeout. The value is saving me time figuring out recipes, gathering the ingredients and getting a different meal every night, this is the value you pay for. I don't know why people expect these companies to just give this service away.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    I don't know why people expect these companies to just give this service away.

    Idk if you've noticed but there seem to be a lot of people on Lemmy who are opposed to the theory underlying the profit motive. If your product or service is priced above cost then it is automatically bad. 🤷‍♂️

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    The answer is always, the service will sick until you leave for another company.

    Then you'll find out sucks just as much there, cause you have to buy from someone

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    In my experience the AI assistant is just trained on the information available on the firm's website.

    In 2024 I never just call a company expecting to be able to be assisted by a person. It's always quicker and easier to figure out how to interact with said company online. The only times you call are when it's not possible to resolve your query by interacting with them online.

    That being the case, the entire purpose of the AI in this case is just to make it less convenient to call them. "Have you tried to resolve your issue online? Are you really sure about that? Maybe I could paraphrase this blog post from our website written by an intern 12 years ago."

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    90% of people calling support lines are due to questions that are in the top 10 ten on the FAQ. They're just the type of people who don't like reading and just want a social answer. The same kind of people who get told "just do a search, this is asked weekly" on Reddit.

    If there was a way to direct the "I just need a FAQ that I don't need to read myself" people to an LLM and the "something is actually broken I need real help" to people, that would be ideal.

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