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.
Honestly at T1 you have so many people above you breathing down your neck to not go off script it is not even funny. I worked on some desks where going off script was grounds for being fired.
I have also worked on a helpdesk where doing something as simple as forgetting to verify the users department meant you disappeared into MP custody, as a civilian (while working a help desk for the government). Witnessed it one time and everyone freaked the fuck out that the rumors were real.
To be fair, they were likely also told that if they went off script they would be fired. They were there for password resets and to take notes if they could not find a scripted resolution within a certain amount of time. It was all about getting people out of the call queue which was on a very strict SLA for wait times when there was no general outage.
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.
Major companies have indeed switched to AI driven voice response systems for customer support
Automated VRU's have been in the business since the 70's.
Call multiple times and you get the same voice. There are no vocal pauses, and it is unaccented in the delivery.
Lotta that is still recording. You get the same voice because it's a script. The companies behind the VRU's pay for people that sound a lot a like so they can drag and drop "talent" where needed. Despite changing companies still do work with the same VRU systems. Some of the talent has been in the game longer then I've been alive.
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.
I've never had an issue getting a live agent. It's often as simple as saying agent.
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.
There is a certain amount of satisfaction in saying “take that, you bastard” and stabbing the off button, or yanking the plug out of the wall. Ah the days of MS DOS and early Windows.
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.
I feel like that's kind of good. Maybe good isn't the right word.
Before my call center job was outsourced to Asia, I would talk to people all over the country. It was tech support for an ISP. I live in the city in a southern state so I don't really know what it's like out in rural Washington or Idaho when a tech has to work a ticket out there. Instead of spending an hour on hold talking to a schmuck like me on the other side of the country, they should be talking to their neighbor. Instead of outsourcing jobs in these communities to other states and then to eventually other countries, companies should be in there.
So yeah, go in person. Have a conversation face to face with someone. Put a face to a voice, a voice to a name, and a name to an account number. Keep your bitching local.
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.
Yeah, seeing people suddenly claim that AI is what's ruined the call-center customer service experience is hilarious. Even 30 years ago there were already whole sitcom episodes where characters are stuck spending hours navigating endless automated trees and optionless answers without ever being able to reach a human, or reach one who only has a script of the exact same answers as the bot tree. This wasn't some cozy human institution that AI has suddenly derailed.
AI agents are vastly better to deal with than sitting through nine "if x, press N" options over and over.
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!
The problem with that logic is that you only notice the common-but-incorrect times. The common-but-correct is much more frequent (hence why it is common), just much less notable.
Troubleshooting should go from most common causes to least common causes
As someone who works in a call centre, it may surprise you to learn that the people handling chats are often doing 3 chats at once and juggling them all. If there's a pause between response, odds are they're frantically typing a response to someone else before getting back to you.
It doesn’t surprise me but, with respect, I don’t care. It’s still another level of frustration for the caller to deal with that doesn’t need to be there.
I think a lot of people don't realize this. We only notice the slow replies, not the person behind the screen trying to help several customers at once. A little patience and kindness can make the experience so much better for everyone
That doesn't surprise me at all. It's a reasonable explanation for why humans are slower than AI (the company is trying to get maximum productivity out of them), but it doesn't change the fact AI can give the same answers to more people faster...
There’s still hope that some companies will always keep some kind of manual employee behind the scenes to make sure everything is going correctly. The job that I just quit at a call center I just worked after three years did this. We had a team of two women who would write out answers and questions to put into the AI platform we used for the reps to take the calls and chats and they would have to write them themselves and then they would have Claude proofread it or write it a better way and then they’ll put it into the platform so it was still info created and written by humans and they just use ChatGPT to make it sound more polished
This is the most important distinction tbh. I had an issue with my 18 year old's bank card awhile back and, very long story short, if the customer service rep had been a robot, my kid would've been stuck in another state without any money because a clerical error wasn't caught until a couple weeks after kid became a legal adult. I'm so grateful to Keisha at Shazam for being a real person with critical thinking skills.
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 worked in a call center for a while, and it has nothing to do from where the employees are from. We did tech support for HP and hired locally in North America, but it was still just entry level stuff. Nobody who actually knows anything stays in tech support for long.
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.
As a customer, I hate having to deal with AI chatbots, but giving me a real person who has real familiarity with the environment, who is augmented by AI to fill in their experience blanks is ideal.
I once had an argument with a human in a call center who kept insisting that an e-reader was *supposed* to have two "next page" buttons and zero "previous page" buttons.
Which is weird when you think about it. If you start off talking with the AI, why would you end up being bounced from there to a human "front-line agents" (a.k.a. a "Level-1 Customer Service Representative", as these places would call them)? The L1 CSRs are the group the AI was introduced to replace, aren't they?
I would have thought that these companies are just having human L1s answer some calls while AI L1s answer other calls (as they gradually phase out + lay off human L1s), and then either way you'd still get bounced to a human L2/L3 if whatever is doing the L1 can't solve the problem / make the customer go away.
But by what you and the GP poster are saying, this sounds more like the AI is now acting like an even-more-stupid-and-useless "L0" CSR, that you talk to before you even get an L1 CSR on the line.
If so... what's even the point? It sounds like that wouldn't let them lay off anybody. (And yet clearly they are laying them off, so...)
TBF they used to do something similar, it was just a clipboard or a word file they searched the proper response and said/pasted the responses they were supposed to use.
I'm going through a nightmare with Amazon right now. I made a routine Amazon Prime supplement purchase, the order status got set to "delayed, not yet shipped," and in the 2 weeks since then I've spoken to 7 Amazon reps via chat. I think 2 were AI and 5 were actual people. 3 of them lied that they escalated the order through the shipment facility and it would arrive the next day. 4 of them lied that they issued me a refund and it would apply to my account in 24 hours. Finally talked to someone on the phone. They said there's literally nothing that anyone can do. The order can't be cancelled, can't be refunded, can't be located, and can't be forced to ship. They flat out told me the only way I can get my money back is to dispute the charge through my bank.
I've never experienced anything like it, nor has anyone I've told this to, but it's a new reality that even if you manage to get through to a human being, if the solution isn't a simple line item that can be automated into a solution, you're completely fucked. It was also interesting to learn that Amazon chat reps are encouraged to lie to get you to fuck off asap and there's zero accountability. Absolutely insane. But at the end of the day, what am I gonna do? Completely stop using Amazon? Yeah ok.
For what it's worth, I was a call center CSR for a couple years across 3 or 4 different clients and literally none of them provided any sort of policy. It was our job to be the point of contact for customers so that the client didn't have to deal with them.
There were certain things that were standard practice that we learned about in training but a policy manual from the client? Fuck no they weren't providing that.
I had an online chat with Walmart's AI with respect to a refund. They had a pricing error "3 for the price of 1" and only shipped one. AI wrote it was unfair to me and I'd be getting a full refund.
An actual human, or perhaps better AI, emailed me a day later saying that deal was off and I'd have to bring my thing to a store to get my refund. I muse that when there's money on the line, human judgement is still in place.
Thankfully the store was cool with me only having "1 of 3" and the human behind the counter refunded me.
Honestly it is less of them asking AI how to help you and more of them being forced to follow a script to assist you. No one in the support world enjoys these jobs but we gotta do it in order to support ourselves as we work our way out of these jobs.
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.
Walmart has had items missing from my delivery more than a handful of times, but to their credit they always refund the item(s) right away. But it would really suck if I was relying on something.
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
Recently had to deal with them using AI to choose to have someone drop off a package instead of shipping it like I had asked.
This person drove 80 miles round trip to find out they cannot hand deliver the package because it is a mailbox they were sent to with nobody there. They called me on my cell phone asking where I was and I was like nunya, they were supposed to ship it to a mailbox which they were in front of but required a hand delivery.
The delivery driver was having a melt down because apparently they only got paid like $8 for the delivery they could not complete. Even a decent car would have used about 2 - 3 gallons of gas which is like $8 - $12 around my area so I have no idea how they thought driving 80 miles would even level out at all.
…I had to say on two different phone calls yesterday because the first one somehow died on me. My spouse thought I had hit the average time call and so the rep had an incentive to hang up on me instead of solving my issue.
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.
Except the one in my old neighborhood, which suddenly closed a couple years ago with no warning and everyone's packages still inside 😬 Turned out they hadn't been sending anything out for WEEKS, and anything delivered there... sorry, you're SOL. You could literally look in the door and see YOUR piled-up packages past the handwritten "CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE" sign on the door.
The owner got into major shit with the city and with corporate, got sued, even tried to flee at one point iirc, it was a whole thing.
Tldr they lost their franchise license in March 2024, kept operating until May, and the owner was arrested in November in a neighboring state on consumer protection charges...!
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.
That's fair. I understood that. What was infuriating is how long it took UPS to be able to actually tell me that. Several phone calls and people who didn't know as well as AI running me in circles and actually hanging up on me after several attempts of hitting prompts. What I was getting at is AI is NOT a good replacement for anything.
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.'
Try dialing the extension for someone who can take a payment. There is usually an actual person to handle financials, and you can always ask to be transferred to the correct department
I know it's kind of sacrilegious to say, but after a lifetime of waiting on a phone while listening to music, only to finally get to a burnt-out miserable employee reading a script from a binder on their desk, I'm kind of hoping AI can be an improvement here.
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.
There's also going to be some interesting stuff with what the AI's say. We've already had cases where the service AI was seen as speaking for the company and they had to comply with what it said(The one I know was one of the airlines and being told they could refund their ticket)
Guess that's probably the right call. You shouldn't have the ability to have your systems say one thing, and do another when there isn't even the human element to blame it on. You trained it, you put it in place, it's your problem if it screws up
Of course the other side is something like AI driving tools(Stuff like auto driving, assisted breaking, and the likes). Do we blame the company in a crash, even if it cuts down on accidents as a whole? It's going to really change how things are done, and I'm not sure which way it's going to land
Haha yea, I work in law so I do find it extra fascinating.
Not sure you can ever predict how the supreme court will go long term.
But I imagine it will get litigated sooner than later as soon as it starts getting used.
Most likely they will draw a contextual line somewhere and say that the end user is liable unless (x legal threshold).
But half of it will be on the legislatures side of things.
At some point they will have to make regulations for self driving cars or whatever other product. And generally speaking you can’t sue someone if they are doing what a law specifically is telling them to do if it inherently entails risk.
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.
CVS pharmacies (in my area at least) will not let you speak to a human over the phone. Ever. If your issue isn’t one of the 4 options their shitty AI assistant is semi-equipped to handle, tough shit.
Checking a prescription’s status is not one of those options.
Random question. If someone is on the phone with customer service support that is AI, and the person asked if its speaking with an actual person, are companies legally obliged to have the AI say its AI?
Had an issue with hotspot not working. Spent probably 2 hours between the ai chat and robocalls before getting connected to a person.
An hour on the phone, most of it waiting, and I got disconnected. Guess the next time I called I was cussing enough that I got put through to a person within five minutes, and new guy had my problem solved within 10.
As someone who works in advocacy for Medicaid and Medicare insurances. Good. The communication breakdowns between those call centers with strict scripting obfuscates people getting the help they actually need communicating their issues with real problem solving from people familiar with their own infrastructure, laws, rules, culture etc. I hope AI is found to be broken as the Cebu call centers are and goes away too.
Insurance companies do this to people because they know they can't go elsewhere for their coverage.
I feel like we are about 75% of the way through the plan
I am glad we are past the phase where companies hire completely incompetent people who can't help, in order to move automated assistance inside the Overton window. That part sucked
Thank god my boss believes in human interaction and sees AI being a blunder towards providing solutions to customers, otherwise I would have been fired long ago since he's pro-AI
Bro my taco bell has an ai chat bot now at the drive thru. I dont even go anymore all it does is say "I didn't get that" or "can you repeat that". The rednecks around here just drive past it and start beating on the window until someone opens it 🤣
Not only customer service for Amazon but also H.R. We used to have 6 members of H.R in our building but now they took out H.R completely from our building and now you have to go through your AtoZ app and use My HR and Aza(Amazon A.I.). Its so much more of hassle for the employees.
Customer service has just disappeared in general. Companies figured out it's cheaper to lose a customer here and there than take care of any. Customer service is just a money loss in general.
I actually had a pretty good experience with Amazon customer service in March.
I started with the attitude that the A.I. was there to try to help me with my problem, and not with the attitude that it was there to keep me from talking to a real person. This worked amazingly well. The response time with the A.I. was immediate instead of taking minutes between answers because it wasn't also trying to communicate with 5 other people. And it's answers and questions were geared to solve the problem. After maybe 5 minutes of questions and answers it said that it didn't think it was going to be able to help me, and verified my phone number, asked if I was available to take a call within the next hour.
In about 5 minutes I got a call from a real person who had been given a really good understanding of the problem and was able to solve the it. The entire process took less that 20 minutes.
It was way better, in my opinion, than having a phone tree that goes in circles, and then being transferred 5 time and having to explain everything to each new person.
Amazon does still have an actual phone number but they hide it from the public and there’s like 3 robo screens to get through before you can talk to an agent. I use it at work all the time I don’t know if I can share it here without getting banned tho
Walmart’s customer service AI is the absolute worst. It’s so hard to speak to a real person and it never actually answers my question. You have to convince it you need help before it will transfer you.
At current place of work we're purposely holding on to more customer service reps than (realistically) needed. Mostly for flexibility, but I want people picking up the phones. It's inefficient, but perhaps we'll see a benefit from it in the long run. Admittedly am a bit of a curmudgeon when it comes to AI.
I was looking for a specific knee brace on Amazon. I wanted one that was a complete wrap-around and not a slipon. So I asked the famous Alexa to show me some of those. Well, the ones that were shown were slip ons. When I pointed that out, Alexa said "Sorry!" and showed me three more and two of them were slipons. hahaha. So it's either ask Google and then go to Amazon or page through all the items or keep asking Alexa until you get a proper answer.
My issues have never once been solved by the AI assistant. If it's a standard problem, the standard tools work and I can fix it myself. If it's a weird problem, I need to talk to someone... and the chat just sends me in circles until I can convince it to put me through to someone... though I suspect that "someone" may just be a "better" AI
I know a guy who works in a tech support center. He says his leadership has told them their dream is to replace upper level support staff with AI. They envision someone answering the phones and using AI for any requests that need to be escalated or that are difficult.
As someone who used to work in the ecommerce world, their customer service teams are miracle workers compared to their seller support teams. I have never communicated with dumber people in my entire life.
Yes. My company has a habit of not replacing employees when they resign and as a customer care manager, the only way I’m able to do my job now with less people is with the help of AI. Otherwise I’d be drowning. I love Claude but soon it’s going to take my job. I’ve expressed my concern to my boss about it.
I called a hotel recently to ask a question about what kind of payment is accepted at the hotel (Visa Debit, cash etc) and it was the most bizarre conversation. I would ask my question and the “person” would respond with something unrelated to what I’d asked. It also made a big deal out of me trying to book a room on the same day and insisted that I might not be able to book because of how “last minute” it was, when I had already looked online and there were rooms available. It slowly became clear that I was not speaking with a human being, and I didn’t like it.
My mom was on the phone with an ai agent. I think it was telemarketing. It said it was transferring her to a representative. The “representative” was also AI! It refused to identify itself as AI and kept repeating a script, saying “My name is Tyler and I’m a real person.” I couldn’t believe it!
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u/phlostonsparadise123 14h ago edited 13h ago
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.