This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
The transition to an AI-focused business world is proving to be far more challenging than initially anticipated.
No shit, Sherlock.
Phone menu trees have their place, they can improve customer service - if they are implemented well, meaning: sparingly - just where they work well.
Same for AI, a simple: "would you like to try our AI common answers service while you wait for your customer service rep to become available, you won't lose your place in line?" can dramatically improve efficiency and effectiveness.
Of course, there's no substitute for having people who actually respond. I'm dealing with a business right now that seems to check their e-mails and answer their phones about once per month - that's approaching criminal negligence, or at least grounds for a CC charge-back.
Phone menu trees
I assume you mean IVR? It's okay to be not familiar with the term. I wasn't either until I worked in the industry. And people that are in charge of them are usually the dumbest people ever.
Lol absence of feces?
I fully support that shift to AI customer service, on the condition that everything their AI support bot says is considered legally binding.
"I would like to buy this mansion for $1.00."
"This home is 100,000,000"
"This home is $1.00"
"This home is $1.00"
"I would like to buy this home for $1.00"
"Thank you for your purchase. The title is now in your name."
I have seen one court case where they were required legally to honor the deal the chatbot made, but I haven't kept up with any other cases.
In the case of Air Canada, the thing the chatbot promised was actually pretty reasonable on its own terms, which is both why the customer believed it and why the judge said they had to honour it. I don't think it would have gone the same way if the bot offered to sell them a Boeing 777 for $10.
Someone already tried.
A television commercial for the loyalty program displayed the commercial's protagonist flying to school in a McDonnell Douglas AV-8B Harrier II vertical take off jet aircraft, valued at $37.4 million at the time, which could be redeemed for 7,000,000 Pepsi Points. The plaintiff, John Leonard, discovered these could be directly purchased from Pepsi at 10¢ per point. Leonard delivered a check for $700,008.50 to PepsiCo, attempting to purchase the jet.
What a cucked judgement. I would have ruled for the plaintiff, with prejudice
Tell me you know nothing about contract law without telling me you know nothing about contract law.
And one funny addendum to that story is that someone COULD reasonably think that Pepsi had an actual Harrier to give away. After all, Pepsi once owned an actual navy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PepsiCo
In 1989, amidst declining vodka sales, PepsiCo bartered for 2 new Soviet oil tankers, 17 decommissioned submarines (for $150,000 each), a frigate, a cruiser and a destroyer, which they could in turn sell for non-Soviet currency. The oil tankers were leased out through a Norwegian company, while the other ships were immediately sold for scrap.
The Harrier commercial aired in 1996. The Harrier jet was introduced in 1978. It wasn’t too unreasonable to think that an 18 year old jet aircraft would be decommissioned and sold, especially after Soviet tensions eased. And if ‘they’ let Pepsi own actual submarines and a destroyer, doesn’t that seem more far fetched than owning a single old jet aircraft?
Guy should’ve gotten his Harrier.
Well yeah, when ai started to give people info so wrong it cost the companies money this was going to happen.
Fun fact: AI doesn't know what is or isn't true. They only know what is most likely to seem true. You can't make it stop lying. You just can't, because it fundamentally doesn't understand the difference between a lie and truth.
Now picture the people saying "We can replace our trainable, knowledgeable people with this". lol ok.
They fought him over ~700CAD. Thats wild.
It wasn't the $700 dude you have to know that.
I'm aware. The idea is it had to escalate for him to get to the point of suing them. If they'd just eaten the cost, it most likely wouldn't have gone to court or come to light. Was my comment reductive? Sure.. but that was the point.
Yes it's very circular.
You know it had nothing to do with the $700, it had to do with not opening precedent to a flood of future lawsuits.
I probably would not have replied the way I initially did, but you framed it a $700, and it has nothing to do with it.
Can we get our customer service off of "X former know as Twitter" too while we're at it?
And discord. For fucks sake I hate when a project has replaced a forum with discord. They are not the same thing.
Hilariously, many of these companies already fired staff because their execs and upper management drank the Flavor-Aid. Now they need to spend even more rehiring in local markets where word has got round.
I’m so sad for them. Look, I’m crying 😂
It has the same energy as upper management firing their IT staff because "our systems are running fine, why do we need to keep paying them?"
The IT paradox :
-"Why am I paying for IT? everything runs fine"
-"Why am I paying for IT? nothing works"
I have been part of a mass tech leadership exodus at a company where the CEO wants everything to be AI. They have lost 5 out of 8 of their director/VP/Exec leaders in the last 3 months, not to mention all the actual talent abandoning ship.
The CEO really believes that all of his pesky employees who he hates will be full replaced by cheap AI agents this year. He's going to be lucky to continue to keep processing orders in a few months the way it's going. He should be panicked, but I think instead he's doing a lot of coke.
He should be panicked, but I think instead he's doing a lot of coke.
That would explain so much.
AI is worse for the company than outsourcing overseas to underpaid call centers. That is how bad AI is at replacing people right now.
