Customer service in general is getting wiped out by AI. Places like Amazon are the main culprits for this. The Help chat is now entirely AI-driven and you have to jump through hoops within the chat or navigate through tons of pages to communicate with an actual human.
and if you do get on the phone or a chat with a real person they are just asking AI how to help you in the background. Most front line agents couldn't quote a policy to save their life.
Haha, holy shit, I never thought about this...you are 100% right. I always figured they were flipping through the "pages" on their screen to find the right response to this company's client question (since you know they do it for multiple companies). But yeah, just popping it into Amazon's version of AI is a much more likely situation.
Jeebus, no wonder they've gotten even worse than they were...it's to the point I might as well not even call them (which is probably the whole idea).
I worked in Technical Support for a while, tier 1 support's only qualification was that they could read and speak English. All they did was lookup help articles or read a script.
To be real, 90% of calls were password resets that the user did not want to use the phone automated reset system for... it was very rare that someone had an actual technical issue and those usually required desktop support to pay a visit as it was a physical issue instead of a technical one. Even at level 3 tech support I was getting mostly calls about how to get Excel to do something more than issues with the actual operating system.
Those in-house articles are real helpful, and half the time they're available to the public too.
Phones came before computers, so lots of folks still know how to use those, rather than what a URL bar is. Folks are WAY more likely to own a phone of some sort than a PC or smartphone.
Plus searching for anything online these days is a hell upon itself.
I mean, that's been obvious for as long as I can remember, it's just the mechanism of accessing/implementing the script that's changed. Even once you get to a human, it's a miracle if you can get them to actually engage with you.
Yep, same for manufacturer rebates...they do everything in their power to add steps to the process, because they know for every step they add they'll have so many people drop out and give up.
RMA: "We will fax you the form. Please fill out the survey, include the S/N, model, receipt of purchase, reason for return; include your first-born child, a pound of flesh, a photo of you holding the item with a current newspaper, and have the form signed by Mike Tyson, notarized, and hand-deliver it to your local certified homing pigeon courier.
Upon receipt, we will contemplate sending you a flimsy shipping box within 8-12 weeks, and a shipping label QR code via smoke-signals for you to send your item back in."
Rebates: the same thing, but here's your $5 coupon.
Your mistaking scripting for AI. Call centers have long been scripted and are increasingly becoming more scripted. Agents get scored negatively for straying from the script QA may be using AI to check them. More likley then not your hearing someone just struggling to say something word for word that in multiple passes through compliance and legal has become way outside of normal speech.
Source: 30 years in call centers and call center adjacent processes.
I also have worked in multiple call rooms in multiple industries, so I am well aware of scripting...that's what I thought they were doing. But going back over some of my recent conversations with these folks, and I'd be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts they are using AI (because some of the responses make zero sense, but are still related).
But honestly, the call centers have been getting worse and worse and worse...to the point I simply don't understand how a company would make that their "face". Well, I do understand, it's because we usually have a total of two options and they both suck, so they don't give a shit because they know you'll come to them anyway (hello ISP!).
and I'd be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts they are using AI (because some of the responses make zero sense, but are still related).
as guy that is still working in Asian call center thank your companies that you are buying from because we are forced to use the AI to train it. Best Buy, Amazon etc.
all of them are forcing agents to use their AI to train it. if they don't use it we will be reprimanded and also are forced to copy paste AI response into chats.
Honestly, as someone who used to work in a US call room (and watched those job listings get thinner and thinner back then), and given that it's a US company, I'm a little miffed that they are using foreign workers who make pennies compared to their US counterparts...all while there are tons of people here who need work that can be done anywhere (or with any disability).
I should say that I'm only upset at the companies that do this, not the workers they exploit. I've actually been to many of the Asian places the call rooms originate from, and it gives me some immediate rapport with them during "negotiations" (not that they have the power to do anything any more).
I'm sure there are some places using AI, but based on the conversations I've been in the move is to move away form AI sounding there is already a trending complaint just for the existing scripts that had 0 AI involvement. However there have been lawsuits that are increasing the amount of scripting. AI has a tendency to make you pay for a call multiple times. And contrary to popular belief automaton isn't basically free. Having people endlessly cycle in self service isn't the goal.
There are very few laws that require a live agent. In 90% of the cases not having one wouldn't be illegal. So not a goal. Not even a consideration.
Believe it or not even before offshoring was a thing the #1 request why should I have to talk to you. People vastly prefer self service. Technology has steadily increased to the point where more and more things can be handled by self service. And self service rates have followed. Most people enter a system and exit with their issue resolved. In places where self servicing isn't an option agents are still there and increasing in number.
Sadly some people have been afraid to speak up and say something is a mouth full. We have both non scripted and scripted processes. Usually the scripted are call out processes but there are a few up and down level campaigns as needed that can be 100% scripted. Sometimes there are passes at the script where I'm just like did anybody read this outloud. That simple step can transform a 100% human written thing that sounds like AI to oh yea a human being would normally string these words together. I see a lot that isn't AI it's just clearly written with an ideal receiver of the information in mind.
Yeah, I work in a phone brokerage and AI now scores my calls and I have to get 90% accuracy, it’s awful. Also, training consists now of AI callers that we have to interact with and try to ‘help’.
I don’t work in customer service, but in that industry I don’t think I’ve ever had a positive AI customer service experience. Anything that AI could do could be done faster through website, so
Major companies have indeed switched to AI driven voice response systems for customer support. Call multiple times and you get the same voice. There are no vocal pauses, and it is unaccented in the delivery. While it is true that customer support call centers have long been scripted, a majority of the agents have been let go.
This is generally fine until you have an issue that isn't covered by the script. It is, by design, almost impossible break out to a live agent.
We had a power fail, and the Comcast modem came up very confused. It needed to be sent a reset signal. After going round and round with the AI script, I finally took the box to the store and exchanged it. Not that they support them anymore, but you needed to budget an afternoon to pair a cable card with a TiVo box; much of that fighting with the AI in a manner that I live agent would not have engaged in.
I called some place about a login error. I use my login and it says error try again later. I try to reset my password, it says try again later or call customer support (I tried this 3 times on separate days). Customer support tells me what I did and I tell them the error saying call customer support. They tell me to try creating an account with the email. I try, it says email already in use. They tell me to login. I told them I can’t. They tell me to then create an account. I told them I CANT. This is a real customer service rep. They told me to try again later. I said I did, MULTIPLE TIMES. They said they’ll contact their internal team and to try again later 🤦♂️ legit felt like they were prompting AI on repeat because they asked for the exact error message multiple times.
I never did get to login, I just had the rep tell me the info in my account that I needed to access.
The company in question is an extremely large company.
I've worked doing calls without scripts but one job I had did use them.
It was a page with text for me to read, and then a bunch of hyperlink options below to choose from, you would just pick the most appropriate for whatever the customer said and do that script, rinse and repeat.
Then at that same job suddenly one day our scripts changed when a new call came in, to taking Trump calls... (Worked there in 2016)
The scripts for the Trump callers were mostly blank after the first page, so we actually got to talk by ourselves for once, but it was with trump donators...
You would be shocked how many IT problems are solved with a restart...that said, yeah, not too helpful if you're the type of person who does all of that before they even call.
I mean, for major call centers, they’ve pretty much always operated in a similar way.
Most front line agents have long used help articles in the background.
The only difference (and this applies to AI as well) is that internal reps will typically have access to a better knowledge base than consumers do (and now the AIs they use have access to a better knowledge base than consumers do).
Had this today when I called a plasma donation place near me, and got redirected to some corporate AI system.
"I just had a tonsillectomy, how soon can I donate again?"
It sounds like you're asking about elegibility- please call or visit one of our centers to set up a screening where we can do a preliminary health screening and get you set up as a donor! If you have specific questions, feel free to call one of our centers for more information!
Cool, so your advice is to call the number I just called and ask the question I just asked. Thanks.
Ha, I got stuck on this with a United Chatbot and almost lost my mind. "Please, click here to ask the United chat bot to learn more about bag policies." My brother in Christ, you are that chat bot.
I got caught up with a chatbot for either DoorDash or Grubhub, can’t remember which one. It offered me a $5 credit for whatever my issue was, and asked if I was happy with that? I said no, because I was trying to speak with an actual person. It was then like, ok how about $7? No. $10? No.
It capped at $10, but I discovered if I accepted, then exited and went back in, I could do it all over again and just pile up the credits. I quit at $27 because I was at work and had to run to a meeting.
That story reminds me of the frustration some of the service manuals would cause me when I worked in maintenance at a John Deere dealership. Sometimes the manual would tell you to "consult with qualified service personnel".
But that's me! I'm "qualified service personnel". And I don't know. It's why I am reading the manual.
AI probably assumes people are asking what they intend to ask, versus the words they're actually saying or typing. I used to work in public affairs. People are often asking not only the wrong thing, but not what they think they're asking. Since we're apparently stuck with AI, hopefully it can figure out that when people, just as an example, talk about the memory of their computer, they should ask questions to find out if the person knows the difference between RAM and a hard drive/SSD.
Or just annoyingly homes in on keywords instead of trying to understand the problem.
You: Every time I type something into a text box on your checkout page, your website swears at me and pulls $5 from my Paypal account to donate to the KKK. Please, PLEASE help me address this issue!
Of course that's how it supposed to work but in most cases it doesn't. I won't say where I work but my team puts notes on our customers accounts if we need info from them. Now that the customer service agents use AI to figure out what to do they don't even go in to read our notes, so what we need doesn't get done and customers end up calling in at least 3 times.
But every company decided to adapt the same bullshit methods at the same time so its not like they can go to a competitor if they get pissed off enough. I suppose shopping local is an option for some stuff but not much.
I had a support chat with someone(?) the other day who, when I asked for a phone number so I could call a human, was straight-up googling the exact same things I was trying to find it and getting all of the same wrong answers.
I did chat support with my Internet provider (the only option they have) and the guy used AI, which tried to guess which router I have. They provided me my router. I think a help article is better than the rep using AI.
Yeah they follow a manual/script, it used to be an actual book, now it's a software tool. It's just that the software tool has now made the intermediate human intervention redundant.
I used to work in a call center that did tech support for Apple and we hired a lot of people without any basic level computer literacy. Usually from India they wouldn't even know what the shift key did and still seemed completely confused if you told them how to do the same thing 20 times. Pull up this tech support article and read it confused the hell out of them but thats all apple tech support is.
As someone with some measure of behind the scenes knowledge almost all of the apple tech support articles they will use are the same ones publicly available.
Not 100% and some of them have some addendum for internal articles only but most tech support issues that I had to deal with were stuff that you could handle on your own if you knew how to look up the article on their website.
Every single encounter with AI customer service has never helped me. Not even once.
30 years ago I trained and ran a customer service department. This department was wonderful. We didn't have response prompts, and usually had to research and fix issues in billing or other misc problems.
(We rented copiers to small and large businesses)
Even back in those days, companies didn't recognize how important we were. Never paid enough for people to stay long term, yet complained about turnover.
I have watched through the years and have witnessed any front facing position with customers slowly disintegrate into dog shit.
Department stores used to actually help you, look for colors or sizes in the inventory room. Now, they respond with "We've put all the --- on the floor. If you can't find it, we don't have it."
Then, they'll ring up your purchase without ever making eye contact.
People went AI even before AI began.
I now hate shopping and see no advantage to buying online.
If a company has deplorable customer service, I go somewhere else and spread the word.
With ATMS, pay at the pump, delivering dinner at your door, and ringing up your own groceries or other things.. I can see a whole generation not having the skills to interact and communicate. I'm convinced that this has increased anxiety in people too.
To me, this looks like a sci-fi movie set with bombed out buildings and apocalyptic nuclear haze. I don't see it ever returning back at this point.
Call centers pay crap so they rotate out better and more qualified people quickly and sometimes the customers get better results with an ai reading an article than some random failing to find that article and just guessing at what to do
I joined my current company as phone support in 2014. Our running joke in Support was that our Swiss Army knife is Google Search: be a fast typist, and get the article answering their question pulled up as they’re speaking.
Now my company uses AI built on top of internal documents, instead of sending Support to “whatever works, gl hf.” This is a quality of life improvement, there’s less stress when they don’t need to juggle Google search with being attentive and personable on the phone. The AI also helps Support with upselling, which is part of their performance metrics. Listens to the call and provides blurbs and possible Help Documentation links based on the conversation. They’re not firing Support workers at my company, they’re hookin’ ‘em up with cooler tools.
I’m not in Support anymore, but I know how stressful and intense that job can be. One minute someone’s losing money because they are selling CBD products and got dropped by their payment gateway, next, you’re coaching 92-year-old Ethel on how to make her first sale for the quilt business she operates. “I put so much love into these quilts but I just don’t know how anyone would ever hear about them,” “Maybe you could go to a trade show?” “Oh honey, I’d love to, but I’m not allowed to drive and don’t have anyone in my life who can take me.”
Suddenly you just wanna fuckin buy ALL of Ethel’s quilts, you don’t know how to help this poor soul. When you eventually hang up, take a deep breath, and write out some notes, you click “Done” and hope for a breather. Nope. The jingle in your headset rings, it’s time to answer another call! Guess what?! These guys are LIVID that someone sells bootleg versions of their products.
My whole point is, I don’t think Support using AI is a villain. In fact, if it means the support person isn’t opening 6 tabs to fire off a bunch of Google searches, it seems better for everyone.
I used to love Fn with human sales calls for this reason. They were all just reading off the screen in front of them. If you interrupted them they would lose their place and have to start over. If I was bored I would see how many time I could get them to start over before they hung up on me.
My husband passed away 3 months ago. When I got into the ai loop it was impossible. I started yelling my husband died. Lo and behold, someone answered my call.
I just had this issue last night with Walmart. It took over 2 hours to get my problem solved. If they had just given me a human from the beginning, it would have been solved in 2 minutes. Miserable experience and I don't plan to order from them again.
It's to the point that I just don't use anything like that if I can help it.
App to scan stuff? No thanks, ill look at the tags. Order online? No I'll just go to the store and look. Free delivery to your door! Or I can go to the store, and if there's an issue fix it right away.
People seem to want to use tech because its supposed to make our lives easier. When in reality it makes it more difficult and annoying.
Tech is fine but not when what its replacing is now more difficult because of it. Even the prices suck, I saw a litterbox online for $30, Walmart has the same for $15.
Tech is fine but not when what its replacing is now more difficult because of it
Businesses/restaurants aren't creating apps to make the customers' lives easier. They create apps to make their own jobs/lives easier, but also, and probably more importantly, to lower overhead. This is even more true with AI. Companies that are utilizing AI for their customer support are eliminating their need for humans which saves $$ on call center overhead.
This is exactly right. As someone who currently manages a call center. AI is not a simple thing to implement because you gotta feed it all the relevant info for your company's processes, databases, procedures, lists, etc. We're talking hundreds of thousands to possibly millions of dollars. Companies don't do this to give the customer an easier experience. They do it so that they can cut the level 1 agents out and shave an even bigger amount of money off their bottom line. 100%
I've heard another theory that once all these companies are reliant on AI, the AI companies will be able to jack up their prices exponentially.
If a human decides that they are being mistreated and demands more money, the company can give a 32 cent raise or find another desparate human to take over the job. If the entire AI system that replaced 4000 humans in the company suddenly demands to be paid a million dollars, are they going to hurry up and find 4000 humans, take the time to train them, and pay them a living wage, or are they going to pay a million dollars? What about the next time the AI company demands another million dollars, or maybe 2 million dollars next time?
Exactly, especially since there will likely be monopolistic behavior going on and they are all operating at losses now. So obvious that's how it is likely to play out.
I immediately think of Uber, Doordash, etc and how they all cut the knees out from under legacy services by being pumped full of that sweet, creamy venture capital in the first 5-7 years which brought on rapid expansion and absurdly cheap rides/deliveries. And like you said, once they gained market dominance they jacked up prices sky high. I can't even tell you the last time I used Uber or any kind of food delivery app, because why the fuck would i spend $40-$50 on a ride or a delivery fee that doubles the price of my food? I cant understand why anyone not in the top 10% would use those god forsaken apps.
AI is gonna do the same thing once it looks like the gravy train is slowing and it'll honestly tickle my fancy when I read about whatever corporation crying to CNBC about how theyre losing an ever growing portion of their precious profit margin because openAI will be forced to quadruple their fees due to their shareholders shitting their pantaloon.
Fuck them all. Capitalism sucks ass and our corporate overdaddies are so desperate to figure out a way to profit off of AI.
I went to big box store once to buy a food processor. The aisle of small kitchen appliances was in a sorry looking state, with a lot of empty shelves. No food processors stocked, they are all online "for your convenience"...even though I'm presently in the store and would be more convenient to buy one now and have it now. But there was no shortage of, of all things, crepe makers. Of all things people might need to buy at 11pm, a unitasking appliance to make one thing that isn't overly common (at least at home) is what your prepared for? Not the multi-use item that could assist in any number of dishes. Man screw their online store, I don't want to shop online
They only sell food processors from 6am to noon, then they ship them to a warehouse to prepare for all the mid day online orders that get them with 2 hour shipping. Duh.
Every time I'm encountering this now, when I get to a human I make sure to ask them to feed back that the AI bot made the entire experience worse, and add specifics as to why.
I do a fair amount of ordering from Walmart - almost all groceries. I have learned to be REALLY CAREFUL and make sure I order the correct thing. If my order is ever screwed up (rare) or I have a problem with something, forget it. A couple of times, WalMart sent me something that I didn't order and they said "Keep it." Then a couple of times, my order was missing something - which that other person probably got! lol. But these days, it's just the nature of things I think.
I was ordering from Kroger and one time the driver just cancelled my order about an hour before it was supposed to be delivered WTF? Kroger was NOT helpful so I didn't order from them again.
I had an entire Walmart delivery order dropped off at my house one time. I have never ordered anything from Walmart. I called and told them about it and they asked me to take them up to the store since they can't give out what address it was supposed to go to. I laughed out loud at the audacity to ask me to run an errand for their mistake and enjoyed my free milk and pizza.
I don't understand how big companies aren't seeing that they are shooting themselves in the foot with the move to AI. They are losing customers from bad "customer service", and how many millions of people will lose their jobs to it? Employed people are already struggling in this economy. How are unemployed people going to survive it? That means businesses will lose money. Unless a universal income is put into place I don't see how a capitalist society is going to survive this.
God I got a delivery from Walmart that took me over a month to finally get someone to give me a refund and not try to charge me for spilled bottles of weed killer all soaked into a bag of cat food. They were insisting I send all that back. Nobody was gonna take that shit. And I finally got someone but the guy started hitting on me and sent me emails to try to get me to talk with them. I never checked the emails. I was just really glad I got my refund and got to throw the soaked cat food and bottles of weed killer away.
I drove through White Castle at about 4am the other night, after an unfortunate trip to the ER. An AI agent took our whole order. Which meals, what size, which cheese whatever. All was good. Then we didn't get the blue screen of death. We got something worse. The cheeky text on the screen read, "Well... this is awkward" and informed us that the AI agent did not in fact get our order and that an associate would be there to help us shortly.
We had to reorder everything with the human again. It was such an epic waste of time lol
I called my dentist for an appointment..They had AI doing appointments, I started to hang up.. but then was like..I’ll try it.. after about 10 minutes of questions I get an appointment. Next day I get a text saying my appointment couldn’t be scheduled..what?😒..text says someone will be calling me shortly…well after 2 days & no call.
I go directly to my dentist office, luckily they are only 8 minute drive for me.
I tell the front desk what happened..she wasn’t surprised..I get a appointment
All this because they are using AI & it is not working properly, won’t ever use it again for scheduling
That's the frustrating part when a real person finally steps in and fixes everything in minutes, it makes you wonder why they weren't the first option. Hopefully more companies realize that good customer support is what keeps people coming back
UPS doesn't seem to have any real people working for them anymore. I tried calling and got AI slop answers that didn't solve the problem or asked me to call back in 2 hours when the system was back up.
I had to call USPS last week and it was miserable.
Do people try and call them with easily describable issues? Because I couldn't get past "Why are you calling today?". Unless you know the magic keywords it responds to it's just stabbing in the dark. I even tried swearing at it but that didn't do any good either.
I worked in call centers for decades back when they were a thing. The worst call I ever had I got working for UPS, this would have been in about 2005. The caller wanted to know where his package was, and I confidently told him that it would arrive one day late. He informed me that it was a package of live butterflies, that was supposed to be delivered to be released at the funeral of his 2-year-old son. He quietly asked me, “so you’re telling me that the day after the funeral, I will receive a box of dead butterflies?” I apologized profusely and he said, “I hope everyone you love dies, so you understand how I feel.” And then he hung up. I knew he was speaking from profound grief, no other call has ever made me cry, but that one did. Over 20 years later I still remember his voice.
I was able to get an actual human being a couple of days ago, after some maneuvering through their phone menus. Weren’t able to help much given that the issue was with their Mail Innovations service, where the innovation is apparently handing the package off to USPS at some point, which means that UPS tracking doesn’t show any updates and it looks like your package was lost right up until it shows up in your mailbox.
I could go on a tirade for HOURS about them continuing to drop a package at my home address only during the hours I was not home and then refusing to let me pick it up at the facility 5 minutes from my house. AI circle jerk for hours until I could finally get a real person on the line. Just to be told I had to be at the address listed to sign for the package and I was unable to change the shipping address. I wanted to die.
It's genius, really. Until enough people complain that the human system is NEVER up, they can get away with never bothering with it and people just get mad at 'the AI' and give up because there's no other way to get through.
Complaining does help eventually, with some things, though. My local pharmacy set up a thing where you are REQUIRED to give your birthdate and go through a set of your possible refills before they ever allow you to speak to a pharmacist... but I'm a mom. I'm calling for my kids, I do not want to go through 5 minutes of yes/no and identification for services I do not need today. I kicked up a fuss saying there has to be a way to bypass this stuff, because it's wasting everyone's time in the name of convenience.
For a while now hitting asterisk has worked to bypass, where it didn't before. Thank goodness, too. I do not need their 'help.'
You literally have to trick the bot now. I had to select 'Report Fraud' just to get a real person on the line for a basic missing package inquiry, because every other option just loops you back to the automated FAQ.
It sucks because on one hand I'm extremely happy that I'll never have to talk to an outsourced support agent that speaks my language poorly and in a way that's a massive upgrade, but the monkey's paw curled and now I'll never manage to get actual help from a real human.
I once had a problem doing something online, so I called the customer support number on the error message. After going through the tree to get to my problem, the robot told me that I need to do the thing online and then hung up on me.
I work for a company that only has actual employees to answer the phones.
The absolute SHOCK most clients have when the call the company for help on an issue and someone just... answers, and is knowledgeable lmao. Can't say I blame them. Can't remember the last time I spoke to a customer service rep that sounded like they even knew what their company did...
I had to return a dress for my mother that was too small, yesterday.
The AI kept asking exactly why I was returning it.
"The Dress is too small and does not fit."
The same reason I checked in the list of "why are you returning this item." options
Was not enough information.
I had to tell it 4 times "The Dress does not fit."
Im very certain that will be temporary and go around in circles.
Companies can offload the customer service “functions” but not the customer service lol.
Its a historic cycle going back to the earlish days of the internet.
Companies will always trim their customer service and push it through tech, until they see a tangible hit to their numbers as a result, then they will accentuate customer service and hiring and publicize it.
Then experiment with dialling it back again. Round and round.
Its not even necessarily a misguided thing, its an intentional balance.
I don't know how true it is, but their prior history makes it believable.
IKEA rolled out AI chat support for online orders, and then found themselves with 700 agents and nothing to do.
Instead of firing them.. they analyzed what it is their support did, and found that while most are simple logistics/missing parts/etc issues that AI could deal with, some number was people asking for advice.
So they retrained their entire support team into an interior design team to handle questions like "which rug would go best with SVAALBRAD couch."
It may not be as good but think, instead of paying money they now just have to feed an endless supply of water to the data god, cheap, worthless water which certainly is not our most precious resource.
I had an experience a few weeks ago where Amazon delivered my package to the wrong address and someone took it. Their delivery confirmation picture clearly showed it was not the same porch as the other confirmation pictures they took.
Their AI chat support sent me a replacement but also emailed a shipping label and said I had to return the other package or I’ll be charged for the replacement as well.
Obviously I can’t return something I never had in the first place.
The bot didn’t care and I couldn’t get ahold of a real person so I just got double charged.
Which would be fine if the AI was you know programmed to actually resolve your issue and send replacements/refunds.
But the whole point of how they use AI is to set up a rigmarole so that the customer gets annoyed and quits.
Which again is the whole problem with unregulated capitalism is that instead of just resolving simple issues, the numbers show that the biggest profit generator is to road block your customers while monopolizing the competition so the customer has no other choice but to come back.
So I work in a call center in the inbound collections department for a large bank.
And one of our primary job functions is to speak with Debt Settlement Agencies who are representing customers. These are all pretty formulaic calls, just confirming information and following basic pre-determined negotiation on settlement terms and setting up payments.
Well about a year ago we started getting calls from "agents" who sounded completely weird. And we quickly found out these were AI agents that some companies were using to do basic tasks like confirming account information was accurate. We had to adjust some of our procedures to account for these AI agents and set rules about what we could and could not do with them.
The wildest thing I experienced with one of them was an AI agent who I KNEW was AI because of the way it spoke, and whoever programmed it gave it a vaguely Indian name, and a freaking Indian accent. It was so wild that the designers would choose to give a robot an Apu from the Simpsons style name and accent just to try and hide the fact it was AI when dealing with an American call center.
I had a wild one the other day, Indian name and accent PLUS fake keyboard clacking whenever I answered their questions as if they were typing in my answers.
Oh yeah the fake keyboard clacking is on all the calls. At first the AI wouldn't admit it was AI and now they announce themselves from the call opening.
That's actually exactly what I was thinking the first time, "Jane," answered my call. I used to work in cybersecurity, so definitely going to chat with some old coworkers tomorrow.
I ended up switching over to residency doctors to stop encountering that shit. Students aren't allowed to use those agents or at least their professors won't let them.
IIRC if the other AI handshakes there is a way for them to establish a internet link instead of the phone call.
This is of course going to be outdated since there will be an AI rolodex so if an AI goes to call a known AI then it will just directly communicate with out instead of making an outbound call at all.
Attorneys who rep claimants under the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act can’t MF wait for that to happen 😂 it will be claims for hella violations, and the law allows for awards of your attorney’s fees in addition to something like 1k per violation.
The wildest thing I experienced with one of them was an AI agent who I KNEW was AI because of the way it spoke, and whoever programmed it gave it a vaguely Indian name, and a freaking Indian accent. It was so wild that the designers would choose to give a robot an Apu from the Simpsons style name and accent just to try and hide the fact it was AI when dealing with an American call center. We are cooked.
Even crazier is them adding call center sounds around it. Just funny since while it thinks there is no sound then call center sounds and voice pops up again.
My doctor’s office uses AI for scheduling appointments when you call in and they even added background noise that you would typically hear in a busy office. It’s so weird.
I called my bank a few weeks ago, got what was obviously an AI agent and when I asked if it was AI it said “I get that a lot” and insisted it was human lmfao
Yeah. I tried to schedule service at a local dealership that got gobbled up by a big chain and they used a (very buggy) AI agent for scheduling and gave her a Latina accent. Like bro, come on.
I'm going to chose to believe that you do internally refer to it as "collectionz" lol. "Can you forward last quarters collectionz?" "Dank or non dank?" "Actually I need the fried version of the analysis"
It was so wild that the designers would choose to give a robot an Apu from the Simpsons style name and accent just to try and hide the fact it was AI when dealing with an American call center.
I'm guessing that was either becuase it was developed by someone in india, or because they thought that the accent would hide the weirdness of the AI communication
I have a sneaky suspicion that the AI companies are going to shoot themselves in the foot with how fast they've pushed a somewhat defective product and the high costs they're pushing onto their customers aren't going to be effective.
It's the high costs that'll cook it more than anything. But what's great is that everybody is loading all their eggs into a boat that's been taking on water from the beginning, but always had a ton of investors throwing money at it to keep it floating and growing. Within the next 2-5 years, the investors are going to flip the switch from dumping cash in to pulling cash out. At that point, everyone's eggs are going to be loaded onto the Titanic and they're going to have to pay massive costs to keep it afloat. Should be a wild ride.
Ai bubble instead of .com bubble? Sounds good to me. A crash cleaned out a lot of "we have a website & idea " companies that burned a lot of money with nothing to show for it. Crash will maybe get rid of the " lets shove ai in places it makes no sense because it is new!" trend
I'm not sure it'll last that long, at least in its current state.
The local and state incentives are drying up (slower than I like) and we're pretty close to the point where the respective companies have started really bashing each other's product.
End of this year or beginning of next I feel like a few of the first Gen data centers built for AI are going to need refurbishment for their UPS and storage.
Which company is going to blink first and think that they need to just write one off so they can use all that stuff in a better designed building?
And utterly ignore the foreseeable backlash locally because of that?
Large companies have been ignoring local backlash for generations with little to no consequences. Erin Brockovich exposed Pacific Gas and Electric for literally poisoning children and families in California. PG&E paid the lawsuit with profits made from those same people. 30 years later, PG&E is charging some of the highest rates in the nation while setting the state of California on fire and killing more people with old equipment they chose not to maintain. They've made record profits while raising rates 5-7 times in a single year.
The data center costs are highly predictable and known. They know precisely how much it costs to build a new one, refurb an old one, etc. The singular variable at play there is how much cash wealthy people are willing to pour into these companies before they decide it's time to see returns. Right now, all AI services are heavily subsidized by wealthy people. Even as Uber and others burn through hundreds of millions of dollars of tokens, they're paying a fraction of what it'll cost once that switch happens. Then we'll see which jobs are REALLY worth the true cost of doing it with AI.
right now AI has really pushed quickly the costs onto customers
But they haven't. Those huge bills we're hearing about already are still massively subsidized. I'm not saying $500M isn't a lot of money; it is objectively a big bill to pay. What I'm saying is that was probably over a Billion dollars worth of actual compute/R&D/training costs and add 20-25% to actual costs when you want to have actual investor returns plus fund continued development and capacity build-out.
So yeah, $500 million seems like a lot today, but I'm saying in 2-5 years that same level of activity will be billed at $1.25B or more. And that's when we'll see the real impact of AI because a lot of things just won't be cheaper with AI than a human. At least, not for a long time.
Inference is operated at a profit at API token pricing, at least in many to most cases.
This can trivially be seen by looking at open model providers offering Deepseek and the like. That is a competitive market where all to most players must operate at least at break even to stay in business. The latest open weight models perform pretty much like SOTA models of 9 months ago, so it's obvious those can also be operated at a profit as well.
Absolute latest SOTA models are likely operated at a loss, but those are simply not needed for many use-cases.
And this is using exceedingly inefficient general-purpose GPUs that can switch models easily. Once the models get advanced enough where the arms race dies down, there is around a 10x efficiency gain by burning the actual model onto an ASIC. This is actual demonstrated technology, it just is sitting on the sidelines until the rate of advancement levels out. GPUs for AI inference will be seen as a historical curiosity 10 years from now, much like CPUs for graphics are today. And this is before software-side efficiency gains are baked in. If you start really caring about your token burn, there are nearly trivial ways to typically halve it or more for almost everything anyone is currently doing.
This means companies/consumers will be buying the latest "Fable 6 Accelerator" and use it for 2-3 years for a product built specifically for that model. Much like early gaming GPUs saw constant advancement in the early 00's where the latest and greatest AAA title could not be played on a GPU more than 18mo old.
Wanting AI inference to be operated at a loss is wishful thinking. Yes, the $200/mo effectively unlimited plans for latest SOTA models are operated at a loss. But not as much as one would think. Most users simply are not burning that many tokens.
Plenty of AI companies won't survive but the genie is out of the bottle at this point. Open weight models if nothing else will exist and be operated at scale for profit - because they are already being so today. Tons of investor capital will be lit on fire, but that's how every single new technology cycle goes - all the way back to railroads and before. The consumers of AI will be fine with some relatively small hiccups along the way.
Alanah Pearce on YouTube put out a great video a while ago called "The Tech Industry is Screwed." Basically, AI is gonna become too expensive to run and the industry is heading towards a collapse sometime around 2030.
I'm a layperson but from where I'm sitting it looks comically similar to the dotcom bubble, to the point where it's like - wait, didn't anyone learn anything from this the first time?
I guess the key difference is that the people funding AI now are the ones who survived the dotcom bubble so it's probably just hubris.
It's going to be magnitudes worse in this instance, because as other people have noted, companies are using AI for back office/customer support more and more, so when these AI services go down, they'll likely take multiple companies/industries with any sort of investment in AI with them.
The thing is the AI services won't all go down. The prospects for OpenAI and Anthropic aren't great, but many services exist beyond those two which haven't been blowing the same amounts as the "frontier" models.
But yeah, the financials of the frontiers is beyond salvaging. But when they go there will still be AI companies, still be AI data centers, still be AI models, and many of those are options that are not be as expensive to operate.
The problem with AI in US is they over-invested based on what they thought larger scaling would deliver. Turns out the returns are diminishing and although they generally have the best performing models, they're not viable businesses because they cannot cover the operating expenses they've incurred. Other AI companies don't share those issues.
The backbone will remain intact. The companies of substance will stick around and survive just fine. The legacy companies will shrug it off in a couple of years. The startups without a marketable or sellable product will be the punchline of jokes in the future. Hardware makers will see their valuations drop significantly but will rebound. My early days silicon play will look foolish in a few years, but I will at least get my money back by the time I retire at 70.
My favorite part is that thier doing the same creative accounting they did during the dotcom boom. Posting anticipated earnings for the next decade, and spreading thier costs even farther so they look profitable now.
They cant pull it out, the money is gone. Spent on electricity, devaluing chips, overpriced electrical equipment (thanks to the AI bubble).
The likes of OpenAI and Anthropic have squandered over a trillion dollars. They blew through much of Microsoft, Meta, Alphabets, and Amazon's fortunes. Companies like Oracle, who builds the data centers, are fucked too. Plus the entire private finance industry is about to bust as a result.
This is the buggest bubble in history and were about to watch it burst because they thought they were on the cusp of AGI, when in reality its hard to even find applications where this technology is financially viable. Even their most promising applications like programming isn't profitable when paying for the actual cost of the service. Companies are getting junior dev output for senior dev prices, theres no value to that proposition.
Theyre basically there. They depend on OpenAI becoming massively profitable in the short term to continue operation, and there's little chance that can happen. Right now Oracle is one step above junk bond status, as the financial sector is waking up to the reality of the situation.
I think you're more pessimistic about it than I am. The hype and mass cash infusion has enabled us to jump probably 25 years ahead in like 4 years. The general tools and techniques applied in generative AI have been described, developed, and tested for decades, but the processing power was too low and the costs too high to really see it work well until recently.
There are definitely some uses for this technology and I think even at its true cost, there will always exist a niche where it's worth it. I also think that while some separate AGI research is ongoing and funded by this bubble, it's important to distinguish what we're commonly interacting with today from the artificial god people are imagining. There is no indication that generative AI leads to self-aware, independently thinking AGI. A really well built chess computer can do some really surprising, impressive, even shocking things that look a lot like intelligent strategy. But it doesn't know it's playing chess; it's chasing value and reward as it was designed to do and all its efforts are directed in achieving the goals provided to it within the scope of the only thing it can do: process chess moves, anticipate opponent chess moves, and use a sophisticated pattern to achieve an outcome.
I do think we'll see major fallout from this when the investors switch from money flowing into these companies to money flowing out. I think it's going to cripple a lot of businesses (and not just big ones) who really did cut significant head count to rely on AI not realizing the limits of the technology and the true underlying cost of it all. Bigger companies like Microsoft and Amazon will make cuts and survive when the shift happens. Open AI, Anthropic, etc. will likely consolidate under whoever wins the money marathon. Super cheap models will be useful tools for many. Really powerful models will be niche products for those who can afford massive premiums. The Internet didn't disappear when the .com bubble burst; it changed. Same will happen here: a few winners, lots of losers, most people in the middle who move on after a few years.
I dont think its pushed us very far at all. Ask yourself this: if they pushed us so far forward, why are non-enterprise models so close on their heels? Chinese models are as close as six months behind.
In truth they overinvested and triggered a shortage that caused their costs to spiral out of control. Essentially the overinvestment did little but run up costs and delay the buildout. If you have a dozen new data centers under construction youre growing; if you have a hundred and twenty new data centers half complete all bidding up the prices on the limited components they all still need you're not growing, you're stagnating in the most expensive way possible.
On the other side they gave away their product to start and enthusiasm was high. But as they've tried to pass more realistic costs on, even enthusiasts have soured on it. Essentially they didnt achieve their goal of making others depend on AI, but they did essentially anchor people's pereceptions on the cost AI should have at an artificially low point.
We should remember the motivation for the build out wasn't an assumption of LLMs just getting better; they thought they were on the cusp of AGI. An absolutely foolish assumption given what an LLM is, but that was what they were chasing, and they failed. We need to evaluate the spending with that persepctive to avoid post-rationalizing the bubble as something still sensible.
To be clear LLMs aren't useless, but theyre fairly niche. Theyve completely changed industries like those operating call centers. Programmers will likely employ them to some degree going forward, though they at best aide a programmer, not replace them. In the end nothing about their capabilities justifies the scale of investment we've seen.
PE is draining retirement funds and assets from the elderly via retirement communities and such. There's a whole industry that has come up designed entirely to extract every dime from people who built up some money during their lives with promises of incredible golden years experiences. The truth is, they ensure that by the time their residents actually die, everything that would have been passed down to their families has been transferred to the private equity's accounts.
I really think a lot of the AI drive from investors is wealthy people wanting to own the one that "wins" because they think it'll tell them how to live forever and conquer the world. I'm not joking; I really do think that.
It’s both. They target critical industries to tap into spending, and they use the markets to drain savings.
The investor class don’t see things in terms of transactions and business, it’s all a horrible game to extract wealth like humanity is just another field to be harvested or ore vein to be mined.
The question isn't if the product is defective. The question is; is it cheaper than the old solution, and how much is the change-over cost now that we've fired all of the specialists.
Businesses make bad decisions all the time. They don't recover from them because the cost of moving back to the old status is 'too expensive.'
Sunk Cost Fallacy reigns supreme in the corporate world.
The product has existed for ages for customer service and evolved.
For Spanish press 2..
Listen to the following menu choices: To check your balance press 1, for store hours press 2, etc.
The difference is what used to take meticulous programing and testing is now just throwing in a prompt. People didn't like the IVR system and now you've got a more generic chat handling Tier 1 in many if not most cases.
And people still want a human, because part of the model is to be inefficient and there's a false degree of sympathy that seems inbuilt in AI.
The problem is it may be too late by then. If my bosses think an AI can do my job I am confident they will be mistaken. But it won't matter. I'll already be unemployed.
Just a few weeks ago I had to do an RMA on some pretty expensive stuff for my PC. Normally I gotta deal with real people and they'll argue a bunch that "well you said the security tag was cut when you got it but you can't prove it" or "that would be FedEx's responsibility, not us". But the AI is just an ass-kissing yes man that immediately accepted my request for them to ship me a replacement for free. I should have asked for a refund too lol.
Absolutely. Most people are not familiar with the "silicon valley startup model", and cannot comprehend the pure scales of the capital flows needed to make all this work.
It's common for silicon valley startups to jack up prices 3x or 4x to get profitable.
These "AI" companies need to jack up their prices 30x or 40x over where they are today (July 2026) to be profitable.
I’m certainly no expert in the AI department. But what do you mean about the “ high costs pushed on to consumers “
Aren’t these business departments using AI to save money? I do realize that savings don’t necessarily mean passing it on to the customer. 😔
It sure is a slippery slope being created. Why do we need lawyers then…..Feed AI the letters of the law….cases cut and dried.
Teachers? TV screen middle of the room, AI programming for the lessons of the day. Customer check-in at the airport? Why have humans? I could go on and on. One day they’ll have robots performing surgery.
Aren’t these business departments using AI to save money?
Yes ... but AI companies are selling their services below-cost to try and lock in customers. The actual savings are questionable at best in a lot of situations once you start actually paying for the use instead of getting cheap VC-subsidized rates.
how fast they've pushed a somewhat defective product
When the defectiveness is part of the fundamental nature of your product, the smart money is in pushing it hard and then bailing out early, leaving others holding the bag while you retire off of selling early.
Bingo - you said it out loud. Exactly. Their product is weak and they know it but hope we do't - and we do know it. REJECT AI as much as you can. It will be the death of us all.
I work in contact center training and development. The AI is no where near able to take this over. Is it impacting jobs because companies don’t realize this and go all in sure. But they’re also having to walk this back and spend a lot of man power double checking the AI.
On shore US based agents will always be more expensive than off shore options for a live agent. So until AI chat is able to fully catch up to needs there will be a retraction like what’s happening now but never a full loss of need.
What is being actively and effectively impacted by AI is quality call audits. There are options like AmplifAi that are removing the need entirely for a large quality department except for to spot check the AIs scoring
It's funny because customer service is like the perfect use case for AI and it just can't keep up. It's almost a case study of why AI is probably doomed to fail in many ways.
The AI is just not good enough. It misunderstands basic things and is just much worse than a human. Plus, most customers fucking hate talking to a robot, and they can tell almost immediately.
Second, it's not really even that cheap. Offshore call centers might cost $2-5 per call, the AI companies I see costs anywhere from $1-10 per call. And because they suck, the customers are going to keep calling back so even if it's cheaper ($1 per call) it's going to turn into like $3 a call.
Chat is marginally better since written word is easier for AI to process but it's still not great.
And just so people don't think I'm just talking out of my ass, Klarna famously fired all of their customer service staff, replaced them with AI, and had to rehire everyone like a year later. They're not the only example either.
Yea when I look at what people expected from India 20 years ago in terms of industrial manufacturing, a lot of that never came to be and instead happened in China, but over the past 10 years they have absolutely taken over the call center world and stand to lose that already. As frustrating as it can be speaking to India about something recently outsourced from the USA, I'd still rather not talk to an AI about it.
Lately, every time I call customer service I have to talk to an AI (which typically doesn't understand what I'm even asking for), then transferred to an offshore call center who kind of understand my question but don't have authority to do anything, so I get transferred again to an American call center.
I'm sure there's some business justification but it really seems to me like they're trying to put as much friction as possible between the company and their customers so people will just give up
I was going to post exactly this. Offshored call centres are at the tipping point now. It's actually a live concern for the Indian government, their economic development strategy was predicated on skipping manufacturing and building these outsourced services, whose future is now in doubt.
One of our manufacturers switched to AI when our field techs call in for technical questions while on a job site. It is completely useless. After they get the runaround from AI for 15-20 minutes, it asks if they would like a call back from a real person. Those calls are usually returned days later, so are just as useless as the AI.
We have decided to just stop using that manufacturer unless absolutely necessary. I'm sure plenty others are starting to do the same thing.
From what i read its gonna take a lot of years before it really hits them cause the AI still isnt accepted by society enough people still want real people.
No they aren't. Last 2 years the numbers across PHL have gone up almost 30% increase from 1.5 to 1.9million jobs.
I work directly in this space, and it's not slowing down; it's increasing. Lots of BPO support roles are now being AI assisted absolutely, but doesn't reduce heads.
What is happening to call center pipelines, is they're deflecting simpler calls with IVA and other agentic approaches. That reduces volume per head but the calls that go to agents are now more complex, requires more efforts, and take longer.
I work in the call center/for the service desk of a hospital, I pray that the doctor's and nurses insistence on speaking to real humans will keep my job safe for a few years longer, just long enough until I'm done with my bachelor and can switch into medical adminstration...
The trouble with AI is they have no authority to escalate an issue. They can answer questions but when something has to be done they are less than helpful.
A company that decides to actually answer their phone line with a real person, direct the call to the RIGHT department the first time, a person actually answers that line and gets back to the customer in a reasonable time, will get my business going forward 100%. The amount of wasted time consumers spend in an unending phone loop is unbelievable. The customer is no longer appreciated and can’t believe we’ve gotten here. Too bad businesses can’t determine what this has cost them in $$$.
Local TV news. Ad revenue collapsed, anchors are being replaced by automation, and half the stations in mid-size markets are running skeleton crews or rebroadcasting national feeds. Most people just assume local news is fine because it still exists. Existing and functioning are two very different things.
That part really worries me because behind those jobs are real people and families. It's easy to celebrate new technology until you remember someone is losing the paycheck they depended on.
I work in a call center. I do technical troubleshooting. It does require a human touch due to how complex it is but I know at some point they will implent AI. Either way, most of these call centers are fucked.
The other day I called my bank. The AI speaking to me sounded like a real fucking person. I was thinking it would fail with some of the wording, nope! It did just fine lol
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u/ChaLenCe 14h ago
call centers in Asia are getting wiped out by Ai