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Kinney Drugs pulls back AI phone assistant after hundreds of customer complaints

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Re: Kinney Drugs pulls back AI phone assistant after hundreds of customer complaints

#111

Post by burningChrome »

Marsymars wrote: post #68
Oras wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for you and wishing you more success. You probably going to be down voted as sentiment here in HN is going against AI due to the pressure on jobs, which is completely understandable from emotional point. People tend to compare AI to perfection for some reasons, which is not the case with humans. How many errors happened due to human phone operators? In the last few days there was an article where humans scored 6…

> People tend to compare AI to perfection for some reasons, which is not the case with humans. So I mostly avoid commenting on or pontificating about the value or lack thereof of AI, but the problem I have with companies rolling out "AI for whatever" isn't that sometimes AI gets "whatever" wrong, it's that the companies simultaneous gut the processes around correcting these mistakes. I'm currently dealing with a mont…

Anecdotal evidence to support this - on a much less important platform.

We have two cars from our local car dealership. When we first set up the account, we did it through what I assumed were some kind of AI voice prompts. First time we take my wifes car in? I'm getting the calls from the dealership about whats wrong. Then I start getting texts telling me the car is ready. Same thing with her, but she's getting all the calls and notifications when we take my car in.

This has gone on for THREE YEARS. Last year we just gave up after telling people in person and going online and changing it several times. It did work for one visit, then reverted right back to mixing them up.

This isn't nearly as important as your banking issues, but its in a completely different industry and the experience is nearly identical.

Re: Kinney Drugs pulls back AI phone assistant after hundreds of customer complaints

#112

Post by dcrazy »

watwut wrote: post #93
dcrazy wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft offers human chat support for consumers, once you try their self-help tools: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/contactus?ContactUsExper... Apple offers online, telephone, and of course in-person support for hardware and software: https://support.apple.com/?cid=mc-ols-general-homepage-marco... Amazon offers online and telephone customer support on your “my orders” page. Netflix offers phone and chat suppor…

NONE of those is comparable size.

I was replying to this:

> the tech companies that are bigger haven't offered human support to anyone in decades.

Re: Kinney Drugs pulls back AI phone assistant after hundreds of customer complaints

#113

Post by intothemild »

chrisjj wrote: post #80
jonathan-adly wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NPS typically improves because no one stays on hold for 20+ mins anymore. People have no ideas have pharmacies work. Pharmacies don't control how much they pay for drug, or how much they get paid. The margins are terrible and you can't hire enough techs to answer the phone at peak call volume. So - most people experience are terrible as they wait on hold for a really long time. EVEN if the AI is a little rough around…

> EVEN if the AI is a little rough around the edges with relational calls, just solving for transactional calls So "AI" treats relatonal as excluding transactional??

It's 100% this for me too. If I hear an AI voice, I hang up and try somewhere else.

Re: Kinney Drugs pulls back AI phone assistant after hundreds of customer complaints

#114

Post by HPsquared »

PhilipRoman wrote: post #77
dj_axl wrote: post #41

FWIW I know of a pharmacy network that's implementing AI. Not only does the AI make egregious errors like speaking in Spanish when the conversation is in English. It also has a limited context window for ground rules of 5000 tokens or less. So correcting all the various errors goes over the instructions limit. As a result if the implementation goes through it will be of poor quality. All I can think is that people wi…

This is an underappreciated point when people talk about AI/chat integrations. If they put a claude-level model behind it, I'm sure it could resolve 99% of the situations faster and better than a human could, or at least realize its limitations when it can't. But of course that is too expensive so they often use extremely weak models that are literally worse than a good incremental full text search box.

I wonder what the price level (per token) needs to be, to match a minimum wage employee.

Re: Kinney Drugs pulls back AI phone assistant after hundreds of customer complaints

#115

Post by mcmcmc »

neither_color wrote: post #94
Marsymars wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People tend to compare AI to perfection for some reasons, which is not the case with humans. So I mostly avoid commenting on or pontificating about the value or lack thereof of AI, but the problem I have with companies rolling out "AI for whatever" isn't that sometimes AI gets "whatever" wrong, it's that the companies simultaneous gut the processes around correcting these mistakes. I'm currently dealing with a mont…

That's been my observation of AI customer support. They're pretty much all glorified FAQ reciters unable to handle any unusual or uncommon situation not in the FAQs.

The one AI customer support experience I’ve actually enjoyed was last winter in a cold snap when my pipes froze. Drove to a Walmart to find a space heater and of course they were sold out. Called my local Lowe’s, got an AI agent, asked if any space heaters were in stock, it told me the one model left and the aisle to find it. Drove there and got what I needed without a fuss.

That’s the exception of course, literally every other time I’ve had to deal with an AI agent it can’t deal with the slightest deviation from its assumptions. Most of the time I call support, it’s because I already tried the automated options and they didn’t work for me. The fuzzy, nonstandard situations AI customer support agents suck are the one thing customer support is most needed for. I would’ve just used the website to check space heaters in stock if I hadn’t been driving.

Re: Kinney Drugs pulls back AI phone assistant after hundreds of customer complaints

#116

Post by CrzyLngPwd »

My partner got trapped in an email loop with a support agent and my goodness was she pissed.

Still, I got it to send a chocolate chip cookies recipe to us.

These things are horrible, but then coding agents were dumb as dogshite not too long ago, so maybe in a few years AI support agents will become useful.

Re: Kinney Drugs pulls back AI phone assistant after hundreds of customer complaints

#117

Post by Scoundreller »

drewg123 wrote: post #107
jonathan-adly wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NPS typically improves because no one stays on hold for 20+ mins anymore. People have no ideas have pharmacies work. Pharmacies don't control how much they pay for drug, or how much they get paid. The margins are terrible and you can't hire enough techs to answer the phone at peak call volume. So - most people experience are terrible as they wait on hold for a really long time. EVEN if the AI is a little rough around…

I'll gladly take a 20min hold after having to resort to screaming "give me a fucking human" or driving the the pharmacy JUST TO TALK TO a human in the exceptions, which seem to be about 75% of my interactions with CVS/Walgreens AI agents.

> or driving the the pharmacy JUST TO TALK TO a human

It’s nice that this remains an option. It’s a dying one. So much is better handled and more easily handled in person than over the phone/mail/web/fax/email/blah, even if they’re 1:1 with a human.

It’s why I stick with my credit union instead of moving everything over to an online bank even tho I’ve managed to get 99% of everything done with the CU without going to a branch.

Re: Kinney Drugs pulls back AI phone assistant after hundreds of customer complaints

#118

Post by Scoundreller »

drdexebtjl wrote: post #91
jonathan-adly wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know what NPS is? That's how the comment started. Patients like it. Because the alternative is to stay on hold for 20+ minutes, and then get it wrong. (Or have no pharmacies except Optum's and Express Scripts). Good for you - I want in the ICU delivering care during COVID as a frontline clinician. You don't get to pull this line.

NPS is notoriously unreliable. When I’m frustrated with a stupid support clanker, I don’t wait for another different clanker to ask me how it did. I hang up. If that’s how you’re measuring patient satisfaction, you’re completely clueless.

It’s probably how their payor measures performance.

But I thought the issue with customer surveys was how biased they could be toward negative experiences cuz nobody else is angry enough to respond.

Re: Kinney Drugs pulls back AI phone assistant after hundreds of customer complaints

#119

Post by dqv »

watwut wrote: post #97
Oras wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for you and wishing you more success. You probably going to be down voted as sentiment here in HN is going against AI due to the pressure on jobs, which is completely understandable from emotional point. People tend to compare AI to perfection for some reasons, which is not the case with humans. How many errors happened due to human phone operators? In the last few days there was an article where humans scored 6…

>;People tend to compare AI to perfection for some reasons, which is not the case with humans. Every single time AI or FSD tesla booster say these ... reality is that AI is given all benefits of the doubt that people are not. It is always selling the thing way sooner then it is capable, maligning everyone else and then have everyone else deal with the fallout.

Yes, down to the false equivalence of "human hallucination" with AI hallucination. Except that a human who hallucinates too much will eventually be permanently discredited and especially so if that human is trying to be an expert in too many things. Yet we are asked over and over again to forgive the LLM's mistakes because of what it can do. Oh it can do this right, this was just one situation where it did something wrong. So tiresome.

Re: Kinney Drugs pulls back AI phone assistant after hundreds of customer complaints

#120

Post by drdexebtjl »

Scoundreller wrote: post #118
drdexebtjl wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NPS is notoriously unreliable. When I’m frustrated with a stupid support clanker, I don’t wait for another different clanker to ask me how it did. I hang up. If that’s how you’re measuring patient satisfaction, you’re completely clueless.

It’s probably how their payor measures performance. But I thought the issue with customer surveys was how biased they could be toward negative experiences cuz nobody else is angry enough to respond.

They have so many possible biases that are hard to control for.

They can be biased toward positive experiences too, if customers feel the job of the person that helped them is on the line.

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