You say that companies do not trust computers to do certain things, but in my extensive experience with human customer service in the last few decades, I'd say they don't "trust" (or empower) the first-layer humans to do much of anything either, and that their level of authority and helpfulness has declined significantly in the past ten …
You say that companies do not trust computers to do certain things, but in my extensive experience with human customer service in the last few decades, I'd say they don't "trust" (or empower) the first-layer humans to do much of anything either, and that their level of authority and helpfulness has declined significantly in the past ten years or so. As often as not the first-layer customer service agent and often their supervisor too are helpless human shields insulating the company from the user by reference to inscrutable "policy" or "the system won't let me ..."
One "killer app" use case for AI could be some kind of quick, cheap, and easy capability to deal with "everyone knows this is stupid but too hard to get fixed in this organization with our tech debt burden" problems.
For example, I recently had to arrange a transfer of funds out of an account. Now this long-established institution is huge, prominent, and handles billions of dollars. I should have been able to do this entirely online. I did everything the website told me to do and filled in all the spaces in the forms right, clicked the "I have read and understand that ..." boxes to volumes of text I didn't read and wouldn't really "understand" even if I had read them, and then at the end of the process got "this cannot be completed, please call customer service."
This error message did not tell me (1) what went wrong, so I could see if it was some error I might be able to fix on my own, or (2) provide me with the customer service phone number, which, no surprise these days, you can only find on their website by doing some persistent digging and clicking through to pages trying to head you off at the pass.
When I finally got a hold of a human, she was able to look up the history of everything I had done and filled out, and -she- saw the error message, which was that I had not yet turned on 2-factor authentication for the account. Now, some context, 2FA is annoying for me and I leave it turned off when I can, because I am sometimes working and taking care of errands like these in spaces where smartphones are not permitted.
So, the conversation went: "It says 2FA is supposed to be optional, but you're saying it's not optional if I actually want to do anything?" - "Right, it's optional, but not if you want to buy or sell or transfer in or out." - "I could have turned 2FA on myself from the website. Why didn't it just tell me that was the issue, and then I could have dealt with it myself?" - "Yeah, we know, but apparently it's hard to make updates like that to 'the system' or not a priority or something." - "Ok, well, I guess please turn it on, since, you know, that's pretty much the definition of things one does with a financial account, right?" - "Ok, please check your phone for ... " - "Can I call you back in five minutes, because I'm not talking to you on my phone, and now I have to leave this space, call you back on that phone, and ... " - "Yes, you can call me back" (several minutes later) "Ok, yeah, the 2FA code is 123456." - "Ok, turned on. Now you can start the whole process over and waste 15 minutes filling out the forms again to do the transfer." - "But you are literally looking at everything I typed in the forms, which is saved to your system. Can you just restore that penultimate-step state and have me just click "ok" at the end." - "No, you have to start over from scratch. See, the system ... " - "Yeah, the system, I get it."
It seems to me that there could be an AI to help companies like this quickly, easily, and cheaply improve their website functionality in response to such complaints, as opposed to the culturally ubiquitous condition of fatalistic learned helplessness for countless IT issues we all presently just grudgingly endure as part of life. But now - just maybe - we don't have to live this way.
Surely most are as you say but there are a few companies out there who do better. At least one or two reknowned for doing so. I think Zappos is one of them. My experience with Garmin is that they also give great latitude to first level customer service staff. I have that impression about a few other companies though those could have simply been the circumstances.
You say that companies do not trust computers to do certain things, but in my extensive experience with human customer service in the last few decades, I'd say they don't "trust" (or empower) the first-layer humans to do much of anything either, and that their level of authority and helpfulness has declined significantly in the past ten years or so. As often as not the first-layer customer service agent and often their supervisor too are helpless human shields insulating the company from the user by reference to inscrutable "policy" or "the system won't let me ..."
One "killer app" use case for AI could be some kind of quick, cheap, and easy capability to deal with "everyone knows this is stupid but too hard to get fixed in this organization with our tech debt burden" problems.
For example, I recently had to arrange a transfer of funds out of an account. Now this long-established institution is huge, prominent, and handles billions of dollars. I should have been able to do this entirely online. I did everything the website told me to do and filled in all the spaces in the forms right, clicked the "I have read and understand that ..." boxes to volumes of text I didn't read and wouldn't really "understand" even if I had read them, and then at the end of the process got "this cannot be completed, please call customer service."
This error message did not tell me (1) what went wrong, so I could see if it was some error I might be able to fix on my own, or (2) provide me with the customer service phone number, which, no surprise these days, you can only find on their website by doing some persistent digging and clicking through to pages trying to head you off at the pass.
When I finally got a hold of a human, she was able to look up the history of everything I had done and filled out, and -she- saw the error message, which was that I had not yet turned on 2-factor authentication for the account. Now, some context, 2FA is annoying for me and I leave it turned off when I can, because I am sometimes working and taking care of errands like these in spaces where smartphones are not permitted.
So, the conversation went: "It says 2FA is supposed to be optional, but you're saying it's not optional if I actually want to do anything?" - "Right, it's optional, but not if you want to buy or sell or transfer in or out." - "I could have turned 2FA on myself from the website. Why didn't it just tell me that was the issue, and then I could have dealt with it myself?" - "Yeah, we know, but apparently it's hard to make updates like that to 'the system' or not a priority or something." - "Ok, well, I guess please turn it on, since, you know, that's pretty much the definition of things one does with a financial account, right?" - "Ok, please check your phone for ... " - "Can I call you back in five minutes, because I'm not talking to you on my phone, and now I have to leave this space, call you back on that phone, and ... " - "Yes, you can call me back" (several minutes later) "Ok, yeah, the 2FA code is 123456." - "Ok, turned on. Now you can start the whole process over and waste 15 minutes filling out the forms again to do the transfer." - "But you are literally looking at everything I typed in the forms, which is saved to your system. Can you just restore that penultimate-step state and have me just click "ok" at the end." - "No, you have to start over from scratch. See, the system ... " - "Yeah, the system, I get it."
It seems to me that there could be an AI to help companies like this quickly, easily, and cheaply improve their website functionality in response to such complaints, as opposed to the culturally ubiquitous condition of fatalistic learned helplessness for countless IT issues we all presently just grudgingly endure as part of life. But now - just maybe - we don't have to live this way.
Surely most are as you say but there are a few companies out there who do better. At least one or two reknowned for doing so. I think Zappos is one of them. My experience with Garmin is that they also give great latitude to first level customer service staff. I have that impression about a few other companies though those could have simply been the circumstances.