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AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

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Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#121

Post by signatoremo »

delusional wrote: post #80
crazygringo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is no different from the personal computer, and it is to be expected. The initial years of adopting new tech have no net return because it's investment . The money saved is offset by the cost of setting up the new tech. But then once the processes all get integrated and the cost of buying and building all the tech gets paid off, it turns into profit. Also, some companies adopt new tech better than others. Some d…

The document actually debunks this take: > GenAI has been embedded in support, content creation, and analytics use cases, but few industries show the deep structural shifts associated with past general-purpose technologies such as new market leaders, disrupted business models, or measurable changes in customer behavior. They are not seeing the structural "disruptions" that were present for previous technological shif…

Changes over which time window? AI projects in enterprises can’t be longer than 2 years, which is practically in testing the water phase, of course there are very few projects of the disruption nature exist yet.

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#122

Post by pesus »

hereme888 wrote: post #63

AI is already so much better than 99% of customer support employees. It also improves brand reputation by actually paying attention to what customers are saying and responding in a timely manner, with expert-level knowledge, unlike typical customer service reps. I've used LLMs to help me fix Windows issues using pretty advanced methods, that MS employees would have just told me to either re-install Windows or send th…

Improves brand reputation? I don't think I've seen a single case where someone is glad to talk to an LLM/chat bot instead of an actual person. Personally, I think less of any company that uses them. I've never seen one be actually useful, and they seem to only really regurgitate links to FAQ pages or give the most generic answers possible while I fight to get a customer service number so I can actually solve the problem at hand.

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#123

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

hereme888 wrote: post #63

AI is already so much better than 99% of customer support employees. It also improves brand reputation by actually paying attention to what customers are saying and responding in a timely manner, with expert-level knowledge, unlike typical customer service reps. I've used LLMs to help me fix Windows issues using pretty advanced methods, that MS employees would have just told me to either re-install Windows or send th…

> AI is already so much better than 99% of customer support employees.

99% seems like a pulled-out-of-your-butt number and hyperbolic, but, yes, there's clearly a non-trivial percentage of customer support that's absolutely terrible.

Please keep in mind, though, that a lot of customer support by monopolies is intended to be terrible.

AI seems like a dream for some of these companies to offer even worse customer service, though.

Where customer support is actually important or it's a competitive market, you tend to have relatively decent customer support - for example, my bank's support is far from perfect, but it's leaps and bounds better than AT&T or Comcast.

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#124

Post by aydyn »

cafebeen wrote: post #120
hereme888 wrote: post #63

AI is already so much better than 99% of customer support employees. It also improves brand reputation by actually paying attention to what customers are saying and responding in a timely manner, with expert-level knowledge, unlike typical customer service reps. I've used LLMs to help me fix Windows issues using pretty advanced methods, that MS employees would have just told me to either re-install Windows or send th…

When asking customers how well they were helped by the customer support system (via CSAT score), I've found industry-standard AI support agents will generally perform worse than a well-trained human support team. AI agents are fine at handling some simple queries, e.g. basic product and order informatino, but support issues are often biased towards high complexity, because otherwise they could solve it in a more auto…

I think the main problem is access, not quality.

I.e. AI isn't allowed to offer me a refund because my order never arrived. For that, I have to spend 20 minutes on the phone with Mike from India.

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#125

Post by zero_shift »

donperignon wrote: post #42

Yes, I agree. And it is not that AI is any good, but those outsourcing shops are most of the time not adding any value, all the contrary takes time to babysit them. Some of this even look like an elaborate scam, someone in the organization launder money through this companies somehow, otherwise I don’t understand how they are useful. Obviously there some good ones, but in my experience is not the norm.

You are not wrong. Sometimes I have seen outsourcing relationships that I am sure are suspect in some way.

It may just be incompetence in large organisations though. Things get outsourced because nobody wants to manage them.

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#126

Post by nradov »

datavirtue wrote: post #72
mensetmanusman wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to honestly say if China is low wage. On one hand, their wages have risen as the work force has shrunk now for a few years and tasks are being outsourced to other countries. On the other hand, their currency is pegged meaning that the earning power of the workers should be much higher so that they can afford the things they are making and transition to a consumer driven economy.

They are very much devaluing their currency. This is all the rage and I expect a currency devaluation race as the US tries to deal with crushing government liabilities.

It's not just China and the USA. Pretty much all countries want to devalue their currency to improve their balance of trade in a race to the bottom. Logically not everyone can win the race.

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#127

Post by _DeadFred_ »

ckorhonen wrote: post #25
jcfrei wrote: post #14

IMHO this is going to be part of a broader trend where advancements in AI and robotics nullify any comparative advantages low wage countries had.

I don’t fully agree. Yes, AI can be seen as a cheaper outsourcing option, but there’s also a plausible future where companies lean more on outsourced engineers who are good at wielding AI effectively, to replace domestic mid-level roles. In other words, instead of nullifying outsourcing, AI might actually amplify it by raising the leverage of offshore talent.

I see it the other way around. An internal person with real domain knowledge can use AI far more effectively than an outsourced team. Domain knowledge is what matters now, and companies don’t want to pay for outsiders to learn it on their dime. AI let's the internal team be small enough that it's a better idea to keep things in house.

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#128

Post by burnerRhodo »

jcfrei wrote: post #14

IMHO this is going to be part of a broader trend where advancements in AI and robotics nullify any comparative advantages low wage countries had.

it's wierd because where before, i've never had a offshore "VA" nor did I think they'd be useful. But after AI, I can just get the VA a subscription to Chatgpt and have them do the initial draft of whatever i need. ChatGPT get 80% of the way, VA gets the next 10 (Copying where i need it, removing obvious stuff that shouldn't be client facing, etc.), i only have to polish the last 10%.

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#129

Post by aydyn »

nurumaik wrote: post #91
hereme888 wrote: post #63

AI is already so much better than 99% of customer support employees. It also improves brand reputation by actually paying attention to what customers are saying and responding in a timely manner, with expert-level knowledge, unlike typical customer service reps. I've used LLMs to help me fix Windows issues using pretty advanced methods, that MS employees would have just told me to either re-install Windows or send th…

I don't want AI customer support. I want open documentation so I can ask AI if I want or ask human support if it's not resolvable with available documentation All my interactions with any AI support so far is repeatedly saying "call human" until it calls human

This is such a HN comment lol.

Customer support is when all the documentation already failed and you need a human.

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#130

Post by another-dave »

somenameforme wrote: post #114
pluc wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except AI support agents are only using content that is already available in support knowledge bases, making the entire exercise futile and redundant. But sure, they're eloquent while wasting your time.

"Only" kind of misses the benefit though. I'm very bearish on "AI", but this is an absolutely perfect use case for LLMs. The issue is that if you describe a problem in natural language on any search engine, your results are going to be garbage unless you randomly luckboxed into somebody asking, with near identical verbiage, the question on some Q&A site. That is because search is still mostly stuck in ~2003. But now…

Speaking of which, could we apply vector embeddings to search engines (where crawled pages get indexed by their vector embeddings rather than raw text) and use that for better fuzzy search results even without an LLM in the mix?

(Might be a naïve question, I'm at the edge of my understanding)

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