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Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

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Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#471

Post by dikaio »

johnnyworker wrote: post #448
smeej wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who has ever interacted with a tier 1 customer service agent in an outsourced support farm knows the difference between that and a chat bot is negligible. True technical support can't be replaced yet, but thousands upon thousands of tier 1 human drones can be.

I once worked in a call center as tech support for an ISP that also did phone and TV. One day a women called about her continuing problems with the phone service crapping out. She had been in contact with us for months, and at some point she said she got the feeling people didn't take her seriously because she was a woman. She was a widow who was taking care of her 40 year old heavily disabled son, where any second t…

There’s so few people that would have done what you did. In my experience, most customer service reps want to complete their tickets as quickly as possible to meet the companies quotas. When you run into reps as yourself it’s so refreshing. 10 years ago this lack of customer service was rare, businesses tried to provide the best customer service as possible but now you get companies that seemingly chose to avoid providing support.

There really should be a website that documents factually interactions with these companies that lawyers can dissect.

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#472

Post by steve_adams_86 »

prayze wrote: post #430
WhackyIdeas wrote: post #380

At least their chatbots might be better than the ‘humans’ we spoke to a few years ago at Shopify. Atrocious company, zero ethics then and zero ethics now it appears. We moved to Wordpress/Woocommerce and have never regretted it for a second. Well, I lie… we regret ever trying wordpress.com (they are short on ethics too, such as entering and walking around your house uninvited… like the orders screen of our back-end!)…

I have to echo your same sentiments. I swore off them a year ago when I provided support with step-by-step screenshots of how to produce my exact error, and even the error itself. The support told me it wasn't an issue and closed it.

A friend and coworker of mine went to work for shopify in support. He was the engine behind two amazing support teams at the companies we worked at, and he was so excited and optimistic to take on that task at shopify.

He’s so over it now. He hasn’t been affected by layoffs but deeply wished he was, because it would give him the financial mobility to make a change. He has expressed that the support they offer has deteriorated dramatically since he started, and I’ve wondered how much that’s his own dissatisfaction vs reality… But what I’m reading suggests he’s probably on point. It seems pretty bad.

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#473

Post by steve_adams_86 »

dorkwood wrote: post #444

One great thing that came from the NFT gold-rush was that it exposed a lot of well-known figures as grifters -- Tobi, the Shopify CEO, being one of them. After that ordeal, this kind of thing doesn't surprise me in the least.

What kind of grifting did he do? The only crypto related information about him that’s readily available is that he joined the Coinbase board.

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#474

Post by martin8412 »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #446

After a recent horrible experience with JetBlue customer service, it has become obvious to me that the true purpose of all "customer service" at major companies is not "solve the customer's problem" but "make the customer go away." This seems to be true regardless of whether humans or robots are involved. If humans are involved they will be low-paid hourly workers on the other side of the planet, staring at the same…

All you need to do is to speak the magic codeword, charge back.

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#475

Post by whimsicalism »

smeej wrote: post #361
sharts wrote: post #340

Anyone that has ever interacted with a customer service chat bot knows this is pretty stupid. I’m not sure why people (esp. those in the tech community) think we have evolved the technology in any meaningful enough way to replace people yet. How do we know this? Those same people would be against AI chatbots replacing their children’s teachers.

Anyone who has ever interacted with a tier 1 customer service agent in an outsourced support farm knows the difference between that and a chat bot is negligible. True technical support can't be replaced yet, but thousands upon thousands of tier 1 human drones can be.

I strongly disagree, I don't care how terrible their english is or whatever - having a live person is almost always infinitely better compared to the bot.

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#476

Post by ksec »

gumballindie wrote: post #414
sharts wrote: post #340

Anyone that has ever interacted with a customer service chat bot knows this is pretty stupid. I’m not sure why people (esp. those in the tech community) think we have evolved the technology in any meaningful enough way to replace people yet. How do we know this? Those same people would be against AI chatbots replacing their children’s teachers.

> esp. those in the tech community It’s a vocal minority of the tech community that shares that opinion. The silent majority knows it’s just fud marketing. Personally when i encounter a customer support chat bit i immediately assume low quality services and products. When i meet a software engineer blown away but chatgpt’s “coding skills” i assume that engineer is not particularly competent. There are valid use cases…

>The silent majority

I only wish this is true. Because so far "The silent majority" are no where to be seen in many other subjects.

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#477

Post by gnicholas »

martin8412 wrote: post #474
dreamcompiler wrote: post #446

After a recent horrible experience with JetBlue customer service, it has become obvious to me that the true purpose of all "customer service" at major companies is not "solve the customer's problem" but "make the customer go away." This seems to be true regardless of whether humans or robots are involved. If humans are involved they will be low-paid hourly workers on the other side of the planet, staring at the same…

All you need to do is to speak the magic codeword, charge back.

IME big companies have pretty solid procedures for battling these, and in some cases for punishing people who do this. IIRC, people have lost FB or Google accounts over valid chargebacks.

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#478

Post by generj »

martin8412 wrote: post #474
dreamcompiler wrote: post #446

After a recent horrible experience with JetBlue customer service, it has become obvious to me that the true purpose of all "customer service" at major companies is not "solve the customer's problem" but "make the customer go away." This seems to be true regardless of whether humans or robots are involved. If humans are involved they will be low-paid hourly workers on the other side of the planet, staring at the same…

All you need to do is to speak the magic codeword, charge back.

If they are in a consolidated market they will just tell you to go ahead and chargeback…they’ll deny list you and make you pay a big fee when yo I get tired of their (lack of) competitors and come crawling back.

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#479

Post by Joeri »

cdot2 wrote: post #80
littlestymaar wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already tried by not raising inflation-adjusted wages for 50 years, and the solution to that problem was: lower the interest rate and push people to borrow to consume.

Inflation adjusted income has risen pretty consistently. The stat people sometimes cite for that is household income which has more to do with changes in average household size rather than changes in wages

Does that also hold up for the bottom quintile?

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#480

Post by raincole »

carlosjobim wrote: post #463
RugnirViking wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the biggest companies in the world (microsoft, google, netflix, amazon, facebook) have pretty awful customer service no imo. What kinds of companies are you talking about?

The world is so much more than these few tech giants where everybody at HN works.

Then give examples. You can't give 0 examples (while the comment you're replying to gave a list) and pretend you know better at the same time.
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