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No one wants to talk to an AI for customer support.
Maybe not. But there are many ways in which AI can improve or help support. So even if "AI chat support" turns out to not work, AI can still be very helpful in automating support. Like detecting duplicates, preparing standard answers, grouping similar requests, assigning messages to priorities and/or people and so on.
Not all B2C is the same. If you make a product for professionals you won't get random chargebacks, incoherent emails, or general rudeness. One great way to filter for professionalism is by simply charging more. Another strategy is making it harder to purchase the product. For example by disabling the checkout process until people have completed the tutorial, or only allowing purchases after the free trial has expired…
Wow I can really relate. The customer support efforts when you don't feel like it, being ghosted after helping a customer, the random or fraud disputes. It's really tricky at that stage between hiring help and having the time/motivation to maintain those very non-tech parts while trying to continue doing other core parts of the side project / startup. The first sale feels great, as does first showing the prototype. B…
I am one of those people. Gotta keep in mind to let people know that the solution worked
I love the ending of this story, which isn't obvious from just looking at the title. The author identified key pain points around customer support, automated them, and went back to enjoying life. This is the kind of thing that gets me excited about the possibilities of technology and AI as a force multiplier, especially when working on side projects, "lifestyle" businesses, or even startups as a single founder.
No one wants to talk to an AI for customer support.
There's no wait in line. There's no waiting 2 min for each response in chat, or waiting 5 min on hold while the rep figures out what to do. And I've, shockingly, gotten issues resolved faster and better.
Using one semi-popular consumer app -- once it pointed me to docs on their site that Google wasn't finding because I didn't know what keywords to use. And twice it escalated me to send a message to the relevant team, where I got a response that addressed my problem -- and where escalation would have been necessary with a human call-center rep anyways.
The point is that it was far, far faster than any chat rep OR phone rep. And it's far faster to escalate too.
I'm sure this experience isn't universal, but I've been truly shocked at how it's turned what are otherwise 15-20 minute interactions into 3 minute interactions. At the same level of quality or better.
> When I get an email, I try to answer it as best as I can. Years of working with clients taught me to explain things in a simple and easy-to-understand way. So, I spent hours patiently answering questions from potential customers only to never hear back from them. I’m a big believer in choosing your battles when communicating online. I’ve found bad grammar, lack of focus, confusing content, etc are all signals that…
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Eh... I think there's a balance to be struck. You could leverage AI to handle the initial messages (90% of which are tire kickers or scammers) and funnel worthy exchanges to continue the conversation manually.
Once people notice AI is responding they will skip it and will request to talk to a human. AI will look the same as FAQs or Chatbots, people don't want to interact with them, they want a human being that is able to understand their problem exactly as it is.
> Why on earth would you bet your money on some random tool you don't even understand? ... I built a tool for people who knew what harmonic patterns were. The tool is for drawing "technical analysis indicators", one of the most convoluted ways to ascribe meaning to a random process and something that will only ever be true in the self-fulfilling sense. I don't think it's a surprise that some users are willing to blin…
At least half of the interactions that are presented as terrible, I feel are actually quite normal and potentially even pleasant. If you don't actually enjoy talking about your product with 'beginners' or even just normal people, then maybe reconsider the customer support role? For me this reads as 'I don't enjoy voluntary customer support' rather than my customers suck.
For all I know, the author might have both received and responded substantively (with more than RTFM) to many such requests, but has not mentioned them here because they were not part of the problem.
What is the name for the economic fallacy or paradox where I see an article like this and thing "$15k over 4 years is not worth my time" but if you were to ask me if I wanted $15k or a small fraction of that right now with no recurring aspect I'd take it in a heartbeat? That's how I feel reading any of these side project pieces. I look at the total revenue and how long it took them to get there and I groan thinking h…
OP made $15K selling snake oil of a specific nature that, if it were a legitimate product, would have made far more than $15K if he simply used his tool himself instead of productizing it and selling it to rubes and crooks.
This side of things doesn't get much coverage since it doesn't sell books or increase subscriber counts!
Possibly the primary reason that software engineers don't just go into business for themselves is that running a business is a very different problem domain with different challenges and rewards. I have never envied any CEO, VP, or manager I've worked for their job. The hardest part of my day is crafting novel SQL queries or tricking C++ into compiling code that will work on all my target hardware in spite of an unkn…