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

arstechnica.com

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

#101

Post by coro_1 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #82
marssaxman wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The few times I've let a company sucker me into engaging with a chatbot, it was nothing but a worse interface to searching their support website. It was capable of nothing but directing me to pages which could not help me, because what I needed was not more information about the problem I already knew I had, but someone to fix the damn problem .

This doesn’t work for technical people, but it works for the other 90% of people who’d rather call and waste not only support’s time, but their own time even if their problem can be resolved by common sense or the first page of the knowledge base. Companies need to offer an “advanced support” option - a separate number with big scary warnings where every call whose resolution is due to your own fault or something fin…

1 US worker = About 3-8 outsourced workers. Somewhere in there the logic of hiring many US Workers to manage said advanced customer service (they'd have to native speak English) is not worth the cost of the department. Even with the fee.

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

#102

Post by endofreach »

taylodl wrote: post #3

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 me…

My bank started to use an ai chatbot and it seems impossible to bypass... i mean sorry to bother you about all of my money that you have... what do you think is your job here in our relationship? Drives me nuts.

But switching banks is just too much of a hassle for me currently.

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

#103

Post by surgical_fire »

guywithahat wrote: post #15
surgical_fire wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird take, considering that according to the text of the article the "innovation" didn't bring any productivity gains.

The chatbots did bring productivity gains, the union argued that it wasn't significant enough for them to lay off people. I'm not as familiar with Australian union laws, but companies shouldn't be afraid to innovate like this. Wages don't go up through government force, they go up through innovation and increased efficiency

Hard disagree. Labor should definitely be protected against exploitation from corporations.

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

#104

Post by Nextgrid »

coro_1 wrote: post #101
Nextgrid wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t work for technical people, but it works for the other 90% of people who’d rather call and waste not only support’s time, but their own time even if their problem can be resolved by common sense or the first page of the knowledge base. Companies need to offer an “advanced support” option - a separate number with big scary warnings where every call whose resolution is due to your own fault or something fin…

1 US worker = About 3-8 outsourced workers. Somewhere in there the logic of hiring many US Workers to manage said advanced customer service (they'd have to native speak English) is not worth the cost of the department. Even with the fee.

But I assume they have US-based workers anyway to handle escalations. So the proposal is to simply allow users to self-escalate and pay a fee if they waste time.

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

#105

Post by crazygringo »

sarchertech wrote: post #71
crazygringo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe 75%? I've gotten pointed to documentation I never would have found and I doubt a human would have found. I've had returns immediately processed rather than waiting 2 days for a RMA to show up in my email. I had a subscription rate lowered (my desired outcome) when I tried to cancel a service. And I've had a software bug escalated to the appropriate team within a couple of minutes. And all these interactions wer…

How often are you using chatbots, or contacting support for that matter. I maybe need to use something like this 2 times a year.

I dunno, twice a month? It's just modern life?

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

#106

Post by [deleted] »

Nextgrid wrote: post #104
coro_1 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 US worker = About 3-8 outsourced workers. Somewhere in there the logic of hiring many US Workers to manage said advanced customer service (they'd have to native speak English) is not worth the cost of the department. Even with the fee.

But I assume they have US-based workers anyway to handle escalations. So the proposal is to simply allow users to self-escalate and pay a fee if they waste time.

[deleted]

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

#107

Post by dcrazy »

jaredhansen wrote: post #67

I don't begin to understand why the bank should have to "justify" its decision to replace workers with AI in the first place. Maybe it works better? Maybe it's worse? Who cares? Shareholders bear the risk of getting it wrong, and can fire management if they think they aren't doing a good job of getting it right. If the humans are in fact more expensive than the chatbots, it's not like the shareholders just say "oh, o…

> I don't begin to understand why the bank should have to "justify" its decision to replace workers with AI in the first place.

Because the workers belong to a union, and in Australia unions have the statutory right to contest mass layoff actions at a tribunal.

Not everywhere is so weighted toward the employer as the U.S.

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

#108

Post by Lerc »

mandevil wrote: post #85
Nextgrid wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t work for technical people, but it works for the other 90% of people who’d rather call and waste not only support’s time, but their own time even if their problem can be resolved by common sense or the first page of the knowledge base. Companies need to offer an “advanced support” option - a separate number with big scary warnings where every call whose resolution is due to your own fault or something fin…

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/806/

I had an experience like this in a real-life non technical situation.

Walking down the street I receive a text to say my glasses were ready to be picked up. I had not purchased any glasses, and the store that I was to collect them from was not in the city I live in. By coincidence I was approximately 30 meters from a branch of the same store in my town. I popped in to tell them that someone had entered a phone number incorrectly and someone might need to told by other means that their glasses were ready.

The response? "Certainly sir, can I have your name, and address". Explaining how this information was not relevant was not fruitful. I was reluctant to provide this information because about the only thing they could have done with it was to add it to the account that matched the phone number. I wasn't in the mood to engage in identity theft for a free pair of glassees, but the conversation was going in circles. Eventually another staff member observed the rising tension and offered to take care of this difficult situation. She took my phone number, and the address of the branch that had sent the text, said thank you for the notification and she would sort it out with the other branch. I was out of the store within 30 seconds of her taking over.

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

#109

Post by netsharc »

Lerc wrote: post #108
mandevil wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/806/

I had an experience like this in a real-life non technical situation. Walking down the street I receive a text to say my glasses were ready to be picked up. I had not purchased any glasses, and the store that I was to collect them from was not in the city I live in. By coincidence I was approximately 30 meters from a branch of the same store in my town. I popped in to tell them that someone had entered a phone number…

Engaging with employee one, I would've just snarkily said, "This is dumb, can I talk to your chatbot, please?".

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

#110

Post by netsharc »

diggan wrote: post #32
no_wizard wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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 I've had success with just repeating "Agent please" or "I wanna talk to human" if I notice the chat bot isn't a traditional conditional-if-else-bot but an LLM, and it seems like most of them have some sort of escape-hatch they can trigger, but they're prompted to really avoid it. But if…

I saw a social media video of people at the drive in, it was a robot voice asking what they'd like. "I'd like a million cups of water please.". The voice immediately changed to a noticably human one asking "Hi how can I help you."
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