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Bank forced to rehire workers after lying about chatbot productivity, union says

(arstechnica.com)
308 points ndsipa_pomu | 1 comments | 21 Aug 25 15:58 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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taylodl ◴[21 Aug 25 16:29 UTC] No.44974720[source]▶
How many times has a chatbot successfully taken care of a customer support problem you had? I have had success, but the success rate is less than 5%. Maybe even way less than 5%.

Companies need to stop looking at customer support as an expense, but rather as an opportunity to build trust and strengthen your business relationship. They warn against assessing someone when everything is going well for them - the true measure of the person is what they do when things are not going well. It's the same for companies. When your customers are experiencing problems, that's the time to shine! It's not a problem, it's an opportunity.

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1. turnsout ◴[21 Aug 25 17:44 UTC] No.44975773[source]▶
I had an experience recently where the chatbot gathered details about my problem, but then referred me to a knowledgebase article. I just replied "human" and it connected me with a human, but the AI must have given them a detailed summary, because they joined the chat, said "I understand the issue, let me see what I can do," and then two minutes later, said "I went ahead and fixed that for you on the backend."

One way to look at that anecdote is "the AI failed." Another way is "the AI made the human agent about 100% more efficient." I'm pretty sure CS agents don't love gathering basic info.