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

(arstechnica.com)
308 points ndsipa_pomu | 2 comments | 21 Aug 25 15:58 UTC | HN request time: 0.408s | 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. joe_the_user ◴[21 Aug 25 18:14 UTC] No.44976153[source]▶
I remember the pre-AI Geico chat bot that I liked. I could call it once every six months and pay my entire balance with a few words. But then the company started leaning harder on monthly payments and the "pay entire balance" option was removed and I now must either laboriously speak-out the entire dollars and cents due or talk to a person.

What is to say that a lot of the functions that a customer service person does is getting people things they need and that the company resists giving to them. Which is to say that companies mostly need customer service agents because the company's raw impulses are so shitty they need someone with the slight independence of a customer service agent just to provide the services their customers need.

It's like why I never go to company websites despite being very web-savy. These websites only serve the company's idea of what I get and if I'm calling at all, it's because I need more than that.

Naturally, the point is an AI chat can't do customer service because it can't override policy, tell people tricks and similar things.

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2. JoshTriplett ◴[21 Aug 25 18:42 UTC] No.44976472[source]▶
> I remember the pre-AI Geico chat bot that I liked. I could call it once every six months and pay my entire balance with a few words.

That still sounds like a bot fulfilling a function that should be solved by making the product better. This could have been either 1) an autopay requiring zero interaction, or 2) if you don't want to autopay, a form you can click "pay" on.