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

(arstechnica.com)
308 points ndsipa_pomu | 3 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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no_wizard ◴[21 Aug 25 16:34 UTC] No.44974777[source]▶
The only time a chatbot worked for me is Amazon's, of all things. It auto approved my return after I answered a few questions.

I haven't had any chatbot outside that be useful to me. I always end up getting to the end of all the prompts only to be told I need to speak to a human or the chatbot going in a circle, in which I have to reach out to a different layer of support.

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rtkwe ◴[21 Aug 25 18:08 UTC] No.44976085[source]▶
I think that's partially because Amazon returns are the most happy path support interaction I've ever seen. They basically always grant the refund/return (in my experience if it's soonish after purchase) and it's mostly about gathering the info to get it going rather than actually resolving an issue. The main decision on Amazon's side seems to be if they want you to bother sending the item back or not.
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1. nunez ◴[22 Aug 25 03:51 UTC] No.44980866{3}[source]▶
I wonder how long they will keep that up for. Those returns must be costing them a fortune every quarter.
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2. MrMember ◴[22 Aug 25 12:38 UTC] No.44983831[source]▶
Every time I've returned something to Amazon it was because of their fuck up (sadly a lot more common lately). They send me the completely wrong item, the item arrives broken, etc.
3. rtkwe ◴[22 Aug 25 14:02 UTC] No.44984822[source]▶
They've kept it up for several decades and in cases where it's not shipping damage or error (wrong item sent by amazon) they mostly pass the cost off to the sellers afaik. They also have their second hand stores where they sell returns and can recoup a lot of that loss. The ease of returns is one of the main things that keep me from completely cutting off amazon purchases and they probably know that and accept the losses for the gains.