this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2025
322 points (98.5% liked)
Technology
78154 readers
1568 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
In a world of automated robo-bullshit it’s amazing how far a little human customer service goes. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m getting older and less patient, have more and bigger problems to deal with, if the robo-bullshit is worse, or all three, but god damn have I gotten frustrated having to deal with some automated nonsense this year.
The robo-bullshit is great, if the thing has no nuance. Self checkout, paying bills, buying stuff online.
The things is those things are great because they are so predictable. LLM takes the predictability out. It's also generally not allowed to do anything that the self service portal was not allowed to do, so you get stuck with a more imprecise interface instead of the nice, precise interface of a traditional portal, and no access to more nuanced help. It's the worst of both worlds.
It’s not great when you have to wait for phone menus because you have a weird request that doesn’t fit neatly into the options, so you have to navigate multiple levels, then you finally connect to a human… and the call drops, putting you right back at square one.
I like self checkout and doing things online but I’d not consider these robo bullshit. I can navigate through those at the speed of my own brain, rather than being on the equivalent of an escort quest where the NPC is moving at the speed of smell.
Oh phone trees are terrible, I refer exclusively to online self service. I suppose an LLM might be able to help a caller connect to the correct set of humans better than phone trees...
If I'm resorting to phone, it's because I really really need a human. I know there still exist some very old people stuck calling... But if they can't work your online portal, they won't be able to work a phone tree either..