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Ask HN: Will low quality AI customer support be the new normal?

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Re: Ask HN: Will low quality AI customer support be the new normal?

#21

Post by carlosjobim »

kjellsbells wrote: post #11

Yes. Because, the incentives for companies are too big to ignore. The math being done right now is $10/hr for voice support in (say) the Phillipines is much more than $0.10/hr having an AI do it, even factoring in the cost of some customer churn. And the risk of the latter for some services can be discounted to zero if the user has no viable alternative. Second, the best support line is one where no one calls in. So…

> if the user has no viable alternative.

There's always a viable alternative. But not for customers who are always looking for the cheapest viable products or services.

So those customers will spend too much time and frustration with bad customer service, because they think it's outrageous to consider a competitor who is a little bit more expensive.

Re: Ask HN: Will low quality AI customer support be the new normal?

#23

Post by quintes »

Deflection of low priority and low human resource requirement will continue to need such approaches. Those happen even without AI now but the way. It’s just too costly to have humans pickup a call for something that was knowledge related (deflect to knowledge and FAQ) or self service (what’s my outstanding balance) at scale

Re: Ask HN: Will low quality AI customer support be the new normal?

#26

Post by noashavit »

I don’t think low quality agentic support is the future. But agentic support with escalation routes to humans makes sense to me.

Support agents are a brand’s first line. It hope they invest is good agentic support to protect their brand. Time will tell I guess.

Re: Ask HN: Will low quality AI customer support be the new normal?

#27

Post by nicolotognoni »

Right now cheap AI customer support is genuinely bad and does hurt the customer experience. But this looks like a transitory phase, same trajectory as text LLMs, which got dramatically better while getting cheaper over a couple of years.

Give it 12-18 months and for routine support flows the gap between a well built voice agent and a human will be hard to notice. Complex or emotional cases are where humans stay, which is fine, that’s where they add value anyway.

Re: Ask HN: Will low quality AI customer support be the new normal?

#30

Post by atleastoptimal »

AI customer support is spotty in places but is improving rapidly every month. Humans aren't getting better every month. Also it's 100x cheaper than hiring a human, and has a bunch of other built-in advantages, including

1. Native understanding of most languages

2. Full knowledge of everything in the company's knowledge base

3. Is never rude, annoyed, lazy

4. Can work 24/7

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