| ▲ | swatcoder 2 days ago |
| First, most tech companies of comparable size to your customers have negative margins and survive on investment cycles, and the tech companies that are bigger haven't offered human support to anyone in decades. (And indeed, everyone already resents this practice and those tech companies. Generally, sentiment is abyssmal.) I know you're just trying to illustrate the real plight of your customers, but it's a bad illustration that confuses the discussion. Second, out of sincere curiosity: what was the future of the industry -- and these particular pharmacies -- if AI hadn't arrived to offer salvation? The role they fill in society is non-optional, so how the market restructuring around these infeasibly narrow margins before? |
|
| ▲ | dcrazy 2 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| Microsoft offers human chat support for consumers, once you try their self-help tools: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/contactus?ContactUsExper... Apple offers online, telephone, and of course in-person support for hardware and software: https://support.apple.com/?cid=mc-ols-general-homepage-marco... Amazon offers online and telephone customer support on your “my orders” page. Netflix offers phone and chat support: https://help.netflix.com/en/contactus |
| |
| ▲ | asdff 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Most of the support is severely binned now to edge cases. You can't just make a genius bar appointment anymore like you used to. You get triaged and most of the flow punts you to some unhelpful support or even worse, apple discussion forums. You basically have to lie to get a genius bar appointment through the system. Once you have the appointment the worker doesn't care and gets right to work same as always, but feels like the writing is on the wall where the next CEO will probably cut genius bar entirely and be rewarded with a surge in share price for the lower overhead. Funny how you danced around google too. They are easily the worst in terms of offering support. People online in all seriousness suggest getting a google business account for 1 month and cancelling afterwards to actually get tech support. | |
| ▲ | Dotnaught 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >Apple offers online, telephone, and of course in-person support for hardware and software The last time I waited on hold for Apple developer support, I got to enjoy two whole hours of free hold music. So they offer human support, just not very enthusiastically. | |
| ▲ | mancerayder 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Where's Google's hotline? | |
| ▲ | watwut 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | NONE of those is comparable size. | | |
| ▲ | dcrazy 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I was replying to this: > the tech companies that are bigger haven't offered human support to anyone in decades. |
| |
| ▲ | fatnoah a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | ...and Coinbase directs you to send a physical letter when their voice chatbot fails. Seriously. I had a login issue preventing me from accessing tax forms and the phone tree eventually got to the point where a sane provider would hand you over to human chat. When the Coinbase voice agent gave me an address to mail a letter to and hung up, I was so shocked I had to call back and go through the process again. I was told to mail a letter describing my issue to an address on 5th Avenue in NYC. |
|
|
| ▲ | SoftTalker 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > what was the future of the industry If my experience is common, most health plans are moving to mail-order for routine, generic, recurring prescriptions. They only want you to visit a retail pharmacy for stuff that is urgently needed or strictly controlled. |
