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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: 0.43s | 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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IT4MD ◴[21 Aug 25 18:03 UTC] No.44976029[source]▶
>Companies need to stop looking at customer support as an expense, but rather as an opportunity to build trust and strengthen your business relationship.

As someone that's worked in basically a service industry my entire life, good luck with this. I don't disagree, I'm just old enough to understand the world that humans build, and this type of long-term approach is dead in the current "Profits over all" culture of the US.

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1. antonymoose ◴[21 Aug 25 18:15 UTC] No.44976159[source]▶
While I generally agree with you on the consumer side, I have the opposite experience in selling Business-to-Business solutions.

I’ve worked for small firms selling software to libraries (public and university systems), enterprise managed security services (think anti-Phishing operations), and now in managed medical claims for niche practices.

In all cases, our firm has had the customer-first philosophy to make them love us. Provide rapid responses and quality outcomes, regardless of perceived cost-center metrics. That has always, in my experience, resulted in an easy contract renewal or even having fans of ours jump to a new job at a new firm and buy our product at their new job.

Turns out people aren’t as fickle and price sensitive and still highly value good service, at least when they’re spending the companies money and not their own.

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2. IT4MD ◴[21 Aug 25 19:56 UTC] No.44977303[source]▶
I've spent a majority of my career managing helpdesks. I teach/maintain a customer service focus for my team, but that's me, not the industry and it gets harder every day.

I strongly believe in the long term benefits of customer service, but the world we live in, does not. It values profits RIGHT NOW, and tomorrow is tomorrow's problem.