How's that AI customer service going?

[bucolic_frolic]

AI chat bots and Texts declare things fixed that they haven't even looked at.

Are checkers on the take? I had a Kohl's Cash/15% coupon this week. Checker assured me the 15% didn't apply. I hesitated, and almost walked away. She could tell. Suddenly she said well let's scan it. Sure enough, 15% was good. Bingo! Why would she hesitate? Do they get a bonus for themselves, or the manager, or the store? An incentive plan in other words. Who knows. Just seems off to me on some level.

[Orrex]

1. What does AI have to do with this?

Anyone who’s worked in customer-facing jobs knows that there are any of 100 million ever-changing reasons why an interaction might go one way or another, many of which have nothing to do with the transaction at hand.

Management in those jobs apply all sorts of incentives and disincentives to store policies, none of which requires the checker to be on the take.

[bucolic_frolic]

2. Phone company AI chat bots walk you through a series of questions

to see if they can solve your problem. It takes 4-5 minutes of this to get to a live person in Bangalore. He does diagnostic work, then turns you back to AI which texts to say everything is fixed, bye-bye. Except that nothing is fixed. The problem still exists. Been going around with Verizon over this since late February.

[Orrex]

3. I got the impression that your interaction with the checker was face to face with a human

But I agree with you about customer service chatbots. Their interface seems designed to wear people down so that they abandon their effort in disgust

[bucolic_frolic]

4. Oh yes, the checker was face to face, the point being the similarity

between AI and human personnel. They are pushing policies to minimize costs and maximize revenue.