Your call is very important to us – which is why we're connecting you to a human You'll be able to talk to a human when you need help for many years to come. A new Gartner study shows that fears about AI replacing humans with bots in call centers are unfounded, at least among Fortune 500 and other companies. None of the biggest corporations reported are predicted to replace everyone with bots by 2028 and …
"an AI agent that doesn't and can't exist"
Why can't it exist?
The quote you referred to was "Let's say you have the most advanced AI agent in the world", it made no reference to any comparison with humans, rather it was regarding comparison between AI agents.
My experience of customer service from very large companies is that it is uniformly poor, invariably offshored to some cheap labour cesspit. If it's a tech support contact, it's often intensely script-driven removing all discretion from the agent. I think these companies could actually improve their customer service with a managed LLM.
Curiously enough, the single most memorable customer service experience of my life was with Marriott. Mundane booking call from the UK, went to an international location, and was answered by somebody with a Mid-west US accent. Would have been unsocial hours for her, but she couldn't have been more helpful and engaging. I remember that across two decades. I wonder if Marriott still have decent US call centres, or whether they've paid shit-head management consultancies to tell them to move their call centres to Manila or Mumbai?
Echoing that - a couple of years ago, I had to sort out a booking problem with some British Airways tickets. The BA helpdesk, when I eventually got through to it, was terrible; a crackly line, an agent whose first language clearly wasn't mine (note to the professionally offended: that is not a criticism, just a fact) and a general "computer says no" attitude. The agent eventually informed me that although this was a BA booking with a BA flight number, it was actually operated by American Airlines - so I'd need to call them.
So I did, and got through to a lovely lady in - I think? - Atlanta GA, who couldn't have been more friendly and helpful. Everything was "No problem, honey, we'll get y'all sorted out" and 10 minutes later, the problem had ceased to exist.
I remember that, and ever since, haven't given any business to BA, and lots to AA.
first language clearly wasn't mine
Someone north of Hadrians Wall then ? :)
"professionally offended" intrigued by the idea one might be renumerated for being offended. Farfetched but I imagine that might be one of the business models used by social media types—so called influencers and their ilk.
-- intrigued by the idea one might be remunerated for being offended. --
I did think a while ago about setting up "Offended inc" who's mission statement would be "you don't have the time to be offended by everything you would want to be so let us do it for you" and the company motto "We ARE offended"
Whilst I'm sure there are a lot of people who could use the service I got stuck on how to charge for it.
I also thought there may be people who would want to be offended at Offended inc leading to an oozlum bird situation.
Try again after a good night's sleep on a Serta mattress. Press 1 to be connected to a Serta mattress sales professional. Then, have a good breakfast. Press 2 to be connected to our mail order meal department. If you are still unable to turn it off, press 3 and we will contact your electricity provider to submit a disconnect request.
I'm trying that right now. I was given an Acer (AMD cpu and dead slow) but it will run W11 so I can test software on it. I wanted to install Thunderbird. All went well until Google got involved - did the set up Thunderbird, got the gmail logon screen, supplied password, gave it phone number (same as on the last knackered PC running W11) but now gmail want me to use my android (which is non-existent) to obtain a security code.
I'm currently at phase 1 - turned it off, not sure if phase 2 will ever come into effect <G>
I think the best question to ask the AI is "forgetting all your scripts, tell me how do I get to speak to a human".
(I have been trying to use the Royal Mail website this afternoon to extricate a parcel from their toils. It seemed purposely designed to stop me from achieving that; what worked was going through the anything else option on the phone line and waiting 15 minutes for a real operative, who was actually quite helpful.)
Management that thinks customers will deal with AI are showing their contempt and disdain for their customers and not really seeing them.
Boards should act accordingly when appointed company officers try to implement AI customer service, but only 2 companies in the USA don't pay or compensate their board members; Berkshire Hathaway and Gamestop.
As far as I can tell, the purpose of AI is to ensure that the customer is fully enraged before they get to talk to the humans. Plenty of offers to redirect to their FU2’s. Should you make the mistake of visiting these explications of the deadly obvious, you quickly realize that the message being conveyed is that only the utterest of morons would use their services. And there you are.
I normally just say “human now” over and over again until the piece of shit that directed me to their website and hung up on me concedes.
This was calling HMRC which forces you to listen to so many “our website has all the answers” messages before summarily executing the call that I didn’t give it a second chance.
Oh…and the website didn’t have the fucking answer, a human did.
My opinion of the AI usage is that I consider any company using it demonstrates that they can’t be bothered to do the work properly. And if they can’t be bothered to provide what I need, then I can’t be bothered to engage with them. I don’t read AI slop ‘articles’. I don’t listen to AI slop music. I don’t use AI chatbots. I simply take my business, and £££, elsewhere. Surely I’m not the only one that thinks like this?
something in the back of my mind says the label "AI" is the same as the label "Turbo" in the 80's - as in, you had "Turbo" sunglasses. It says AI, but it's just one of those adventure books with a "If option A, turn to page 50"
But the turn to page 50 book is priced the same as.....an AI book
Could someone start a database to count how many first-inputs for all chatbots in the world, are the word "human", and how many first mouse clicks for all cute chatbot bouncy icons are the X just above it
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