So we're supposed to believe that removing humans from customer support will lead to better outcomes?

> Ensure you only pay for the value Sierra delivers with outcome-based pricing.

Yeah... that won't last.

With advances in AI you would've thought the priority would be on automating as much as possible of the non-human facing work and double-down on meaningful customer relationships - but no.

▲

downrightmike an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It is just to get hold of the process and make it impossible to go away from them. Then they will jack up the prices like we've never seen. Then it will be "people are actually cheaper why are we using them?" - can't move off the platform, they own our IP even though they said they wouldn't but they updated their ToS without us noticing last month and here we are.

▲

htx80nerd 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

AI customer support is trash and everyone hates it , but it makes the Wall St numbers go up, so it's a good thing.

▲

zamadatix 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

AI support generally sucks but I actually wouldn't mind if everyone used it for the initial call routing portion. Beats an IVR tree or waiting for someone to just redirect your call to the real queue.

▲

el_benhameen 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I respectfully disagree with the initial routing point. I very strongly prefer a traditional tree to “I’m your voice assistant! In a few words, tell me how I can help!”.

The tree is structured and gives me an immediate sense of how to map my task to the support offering. If I’m calling, I probably have an issue that I can’t self-serve resolve via the customer portal or whatever, so walking the tree lets me get an idea of who can help.

The “voice assistant” gives me no sense of what the system is capable of or how to take advantage of those capabilities. So I’m left guessing at phrases or functions based off of the assumption that there’s still some kind of tree-like structure that’s been abstracted away. Same outcome, more cognitive overhead, plus I usually have to shout in my best William … Shatner … impression to get it to understand me.

	▲	zamadatix 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		If you're calling it an "AI assistant" then it's probably not the type of system I was talking about and I probably don't like it either. AI call routing is having an IVR tree's functionality where the call system does the work to map it to a number in the tree. Anything more than that is getting into something else AI. E.g. instead of waiting for the IVR tree to be read out to find out you needed to press 4 for the shipping department the AI asks "Please state the department you wish to connect to or reason for calling" and you just say "shipping" (or however much of a life story you want to give it) and it's the call system's job to figure out where in the menu that is instead. For repeat calls once you know its AI call routing you can just say "shipping" right as the call starts, the same as you'd known press "4" before the 2nd time around an IVR tree, except you don't have to remember the random digits.
	▲	vel0city 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The other side is if you already know the tree you can automate dialing the right tones to get you to where you need if you call it often enough.

▲

ej88 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

ime its very implementation dependent

but even a simple impl to answer questions can knock out like 50% of callers who are tech-illiterate at 100x cheaper cost, it's just strictly better economics and better for those customers

▲

tombert 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I broadly agree though I have noticed that it seems to be getting a bit better. I hate how patronizing pretty much every LLM tends to be, but at least I've noticed now that the AI support is better at figuring out what it is I actually want.

That said, my life hack for these things to get escalated to a human is to just keep saying or typing curse words. Usually that triggers a "connect to human" flow. I can't promise it will always work, but I can say it has worked every time I have tried it.

▲

DonHopkins 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Their secret is that they have hoards of fake AI Customers who will call into their client's AI Customer Support and respond to surveys saying they were extremely happy with the support, so the client has to pay for perfect simulated outcomes.

▲

ej88 5 hours ago | parent [-]

ai skeptic fanfic evolves in fascinating ways every day

▲

svnt 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This isn’t specific to AI this is just the dark arts startup valuation playbook. AI extension of gaming the metric “what is the ratio of “active” accounts to validated human daus”

▲

Lionga 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

just wait until you read the ai "optimist" fanfic

	▲	ej88 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		true. we'll see how many ai cos become profit printers a few years from now