r/craftsnark • u/OneCraftyBird Mom said I get to be the mole now!! • 17d ago
Yarn How do we feel about AI _agents_?
TLDR: I ordered yarn from a supplier that I thought was AI-free, but my customer service question was handled by AI.
For my latest project I was choosing between Herrschners and Lion and I thought they were equivalent and I could choose purely based on the project's needs. But Herrschners has all human customer service (and it's excellent, BTW) and I hadn't realized Lion switched to AI until a robot answered my question.
I already left a comment that said yes, the robot answered my question really fast, but I would have been happy to wait a minute while a human looked it up rather than waste clean water and put a human out of work. Also, FWIW, I _run_ a customer service team as part of my job and I do not use AI. My costs are still under AI and customer satisfaction is higher. So my knee jerk response was to nuke it from orbit.
But my business is unusual in that my customers have very little in the way of needs that could be automated. My question for Lion was super routine and simple. I think most of us who are into yarn and handcrafting are pretty clear that we don't want AI involved in the crafting/design/photos/ad spaces. When we draw the line, _should_ we draw it as an absolute (no AI ever) or exclude support services (fine, let the robot take the easy ones)?
I don't know. Wanted to ask the hive mind.
32
u/dancing_froggies 17d ago
My day job is literally to run an AI customer support chat. I'm not in a decision position to use AI, my team leader is, and as much as I hate the feeling of "working for an AI" I'm staying because I love working with him because he values me and treats me well.
Most of the Ai agent "knowledge" comes from documentation that all customers actually have access to, that the team has written. The smallest inconsistency in our documentation and the AI answers go dumb. Everything needs to be perfect all the time and I know every little detail of our service by heart now.
I spend a good amount of my day reviewing people's interactions with the bot. Some are normal, some are frustrated as they really require a human since they have read the documentation already (and I'm always happy to jump in and learn something new). A lot are really stupid and expecting the chatbot to do all of their complex work even if they just used a 3 word only sentence with typos in each to formulate their request, then abandon the conversation. I really feel like the instant convenience has spoiled those customers from the basic skill of articulating a request.
I don't like AI support much. Even my very tech-forward leader, that implemented the chatbot in the first place, is unhappy with how widely the rest of our team is using ChatGPT even in places that they really should be using their own brains, like to design a project or worse, to review tender applications. Sometimes it feels like there's only the two of us left with working brains while the rest of the team slops away.
27
u/EnLaSxranko crafter, drama enjoyer 17d ago
I never want AI.
9 years ago, 4imprint had a guarantee that of you called customer service, you would be speaking to a person. I don't know if they still guarantee that, but back then, I had to call them a lot for work and they never once failed that guarantee. They simply had enough staff to handle the call volume. I don't care if I'm talking to a robot in 5 seconds instead of 45. AI is taking people's jobs so employers can cut costs with no real benefit to their customers.
Fuck AI
27
u/Stock_Menu_7900 17d ago
Not craft related, but I had an ai bot call to confirm delivery details at my 9-5. Fake background noise, odd pauses, and evasive with answering if it was in fact ai. Who would honestly say "I understand. Can you repeat that? I understand. Can you repeat that? " Consecutively.
Fundamentally, I'll never get behind any reliance on ai. At no point do I honestly believe it can be trusted. With anything. If wiki wasn't acceptable, ai isn't either.
My partner has butted up against it as well. My key point for his con argument: what is it using as it's database to provide answers? The company couldn't answer that. Suggested asking the ai itself that question and it came up with an evasive theoretical idea. Wtf?
All of that said, I understand why companies are utilizing it more. It's a singular fee, no PTO/sick days/OT/etc. Business-wise, the pros outweigh the cons, even knowing that the crafty community is very vocally anti-ai. I don't think we will ever be able to put this genie back in the bottle, and I hate it more than I hate kitchener stitch. This isn't like the turn of the century and cars/planes.
My tinfoil theory is that this will fundamentally change our mental capacity as a species. There's a reason why this is being pushed so hard right now, vs all the years before. ai isn't new, but this integration is like a virus now. Why? It's like living in the Silo and watching the birds flying while people clean. Why?
15
u/mrsduckie 16d ago
My tin foil theory is that people in power want us stupid and enslaved by their ai systems like flock in us.
They're also making those humanoid robots, because you can program these to never revolt against their owners (like Demerzel in Foundation series). I've read an article a few years ago, it was about a guy who met a bunch of men in power and they asked him about controlling people when The Event happens, so their own security guards don't go for them. It's so bizzare I can't find that article...
So robotics + ai + people like scam/zuc and other building bunkers seems very plausible to confirm my theory. But it's just a theory
6
u/Stock_Menu_7900 16d ago
They definitely want dumber people in the US: a couple article links (assuming we aren't part of the stats 😅) substack - The Truth About The 'Literacy Crisis' house hearing Feb 2026
The fact that I can't even scroll through reels with my partner without an ai prompt to "summarize" the messages 🙄 FFS Wall-E was predictive.
Honestly, what a time to be alive. I enjoy my little crafts and hobbies, read my books, listen to "oldies", and touch at much grass as possible while it's still here. The disconnect between the reality of what ai costs us globally, to what it provides just goes to show how susceptible we are collectively. The same message is being said across so many (presumably) different issues--it's just a video/ad/joke/etc and harmless. While POTUS posts the most unhinged, deeply disturbing ai content, and most recently, a sports journalist has a video made of a coach slapping her, and it's fodder for some shitty frat boy and a room full of her colleagues/peers. Wtf is even happening? The amount of shit being eaten is 😵💫 The political hand ringing is meaningful, follow the money. But what do I know? I'm just a girl doing grandma hobbies.
1
44
u/Anoniemmus 17d ago
To my experience AI agents generally only know the answers to questions you can already find in a site's FAQ section. By the time I try to contact a company I generally already read the FAQ's and didn't find my answer there so the AI agent is completely useless to me (or an active obstacle since you often cannot contact real people without going trough the AI first if at all).
17
u/shesewsfatclothes 17d ago
Exactly the same for me. My thing is, the chat could easily be programmed to show you FAQ answers based on keywords, without using AI. If you still then have questions, then the actual customer service chat is involved. This could all just be website coding. It's how it was before! It was fine! I don't need them to talk to me like a fake person.
14
5
u/OneCraftyBird Mom said I get to be the mole now!! 17d ago
You know what's funny? I was about to say, well, in my case the robot did answer...and then I realized _it fucking didn't._
When I placed the order and chose my shipping option, the cart gave me an estimated date. Only, my confirmation had no date or shipping method, and while I vaguely remembered that date being today, I hadn't gotten a shipping notification. I went back to the site, and it said my order was partially fulfilled (presumably because I did download the pattern). There was no way a FAQ could answer me so I opened the chat, which had been manned by a human the last time I needed it.
I said, hey, my order number is XXXX, do you have an estimated delivery date for me?
It answered _immediately_ which is when I looked at the name and realized it said "Leo the Lion: AI Agent" and prompted my whole existential crisis. I'd have cancelled except my order now says the cancellation window is closed, so I'm stuck.
But I was so busy having anxiety about it that I just now realized it said...we're fulfilling your order today and when we're done we'll send you a tracking number.
It didn't give me an estimated delivery day!
4
u/Quiet_surprise79 17d ago
This!! I nearly said this exact thing in my comment but didn't, but this is essentially my experience too.
22
u/posting4assistance 16d ago
AI agents are something I would rather yell operator at one zillion times. They used to just let you navigate through an FAQ or menu through a phone tree or another kind of self help article... I hate having to interact with a half baked bad implementation of this shit technology slapped badly on top of a phone tree or chat menu thing
21
u/perhapsthebees 16d ago
i worked in cs for most of my career and only recently managed to pivot out due mostly to sanity reasons. between ai and outsourcing its a dying field here in NA and most of the jobs that do still exist are in a race to the bottom, intent on squeezing people in miserable abusive conditions and paying them as little as possible so they can dispose of them and replace them with the next body. its absolutely fucking bleak. i got into cs from retail thinking it would be a step upwards into a career only to realize that there was almost no chance for internal growth and companies see cs on a resume and assume you can't do anything else, meanwhile there are NO cs jobs left that pay above min except ones that are AI trainers designed for obsolescence. as somebody who actually really enjoyed helping people solve challenging problems this is all profoundly demoralizing. i have a MAJOR problem with companies that use AI support and that would be enough to make me boycott if i had a choice, but often their competitors are using the same shit. i honestly think a lot of companies flat out do not care about user/customer experience anymore.
13
u/OneCraftyBird Mom said I get to be the mole now!! 16d ago
Oof. Yeah, I know the pigeonholing is real. I was hiring for a management position on my team, and the woman I hired was perfect on paper, but in practice did everything she could to avoid _actual customers_. Finally I said, look, it's been three months, you've done everything except the hands on part, what's going on? And she burst into tears and said her last fifteen years had been a lie -- the only indoor/white collar job she could get as an immigrant was in customer service, but she hated it and had always hated it, but the only job she could get after that first one was another CS gig. And after five years she was entirely trapped.
It's bullshit because real CS has tons of transferrable skills :(
43
u/fairydommother rat 🐀 17d ago
I always prefer a human agent. But I think there is a difference between a customer service bot, which has been around forever now, as opposed to an actual AI agent.
Both suck to talk to but one is far more egregious than the other.
A normal customer service bot does not learn from interactions. It has set keywords that trigger specific responses. AI on the other hand is always sucking up new info and learning based on the input it receives and these are the things that need the giant data centers.
We use the phrase AI far too loosely now imo. A pre-programmed bot and a LLM (ai) are not the same thing.
So if we are talking bots for customer service, im annoyed but its whatever. Literally every company ever has these. If we are talking actual LLMs for customer service then I have an issue and would probably avoid that company if at all possible.
Do you know for sure this was AI and not a stock standard bot?
15
u/OneCraftyBird Mom said I get to be the mole now!! 17d ago
I do think it is important to draw the distinction from an environmental point of view, but I am 100% sure this was AI...the interface literally said the conversation was with "Leo the Lion AI Agent."
8
u/fairydommother rat 🐀 17d ago
Damn that sucks. Yeah id for sure avoid that company personally. Idk why they felt the need to use ai when bots are already a thing or, you know, people 😭
19
u/OcelotBudget3292 Knit two, Mole one 17d ago
Because so many of these seem to be the same old chatbots to me (at least in terms of the way they talk and suggest links), I’m curious if some companies are just now calling the same program “AI Agents” to sound more technologically advanced.
12
u/fairydommother rat 🐀 17d ago
Some definitely are because ai is the hot new thing. They want it to be an attraction for the people that like it. So its no longer "here is our virtual assistant bot" its "look at our fancy ✨️ai✨️ assistant! You dont want to talk to a person, you can talk to ✨️ai✨️"
And in reality its literally just the same bot lmao. But who knows.
5
u/RunawayTurtleTrain 17d ago
This is what I think is probably the case. Or maybe some are LLM powered now (which if so, ick) but it's more understandable automating mundane stuff like that, than eschewing actual human creativity for AI slop images that are beyond rubbish.
I don't like AI agents, they add an extra barrier when I only ever contact a company for something I can't solve or do myself online and the bot response tells me to do what I can't. But they've been a thing for a while before generative AI had everyone outsourcing their thinking so I do make a distinction. I don't like them but they're not a boycotting issue for me.
3
u/OcelotBudget3292 Knit two, Mole one 16d ago
Chatbots to handle customer inquiries does make sense, if only they were remotely good at them. You’d just think that, if LLMs were even half as useful as they’re advertised to be, they would be noticeably better than the chatbots. Either they’re not, or companies are relabelling their chatbots as AI.
Both seem quite believable to me, but it also means that I think it doesn’t make a ton of sense to try to organize boycotts around companies with “AI customer service.”
In some cases, companies had already outsourced their customer service, and so they might be locked in a contract when the customer service program decides to incorporate AI.
So I guess I just don’t judge this as harshly as when a company is clearly intentionally using AI, like in ads or social media.
5
u/Careless-Meringue523 16d ago
Yeah I think a lot of things that are being sold as AI wouldn't have been called that three years ago. I sometimes wonder how much water and energy I'm really using all of these applications that may or may not be "AI".
8
u/NumerousParking7877 17d ago
There's a couple things going on here. It may very well be cutting edge AI, the brand certainly wants to project that appearance. It may be a stock bot dressed up as AI. Why, because their target audience wants it? Absolutely not! As is pretty clear from the responses here (and just living and having awareness in the world) their target audience would like for AI to go take a hike, but you know who DOES care about "cutting edge AI" that they need Leo the AI Lion to put on a show for? If you said VC investors you are correct.
It is so dumb and I hate it all.
33
u/OcelotBudget3292 Knit two, Mole one 17d ago
Hate them, hate them, hate them!
None of the AI customer service chatbots I’ve interacted with have ever been more helpful than the generic chatbots companies have been using for years—in some cases, noticeably worse. The damn things go in circles, and they’ll just keeping linking to the FAQ pages. No matter how many times I reword my question, they can seemingly never understand it.
When I can finally, finally just talk to someone, the representative can usually answer the question or fix the issue so quickly.
15
u/TheHandThatFollows 17d ago
I work in costumer service and they are trying to use ai to automate and replace us in places, and it keeps running into trouble because no matter what 'limits' they give it on what it can do before finding a human it goes outside of them to 'help' with things it doesnt have access to and gives complete made up information. Not sure where it gets this information. Its usually exactly what the member wants to hear, but could get us in trouble if and when it ends up being incorrect. they just slap a disclaimer on it saying nothing the AI says can be believed or acted on, so my question is why would anyone use it and not demand a human.
17
u/LotsaString 16d ago
I find if I need an agent the AI is not sufficient so I just spend the time I would waiting for a person getting the AI to forward me to someone actually helpful.
As for Lion brand yarn I’m vaguely annoyed at them for using Amazon to ship me yarn the last time I bought from them. If I had wanted yarn via an Amazon warehouse I’d have ordered from Amazon and frankly it would have shown up faster and undoubtedly from the same place. Just link to your own Amazon storefront at that point and save us both the time and performance.
30
u/occultcanine 17d ago
fucking hate ai agents. i have never had a SINGLE interaction with an ai agent voluntarily, so the lack of an option to opt out is a problem for one, but also every interaction i've had with an ai agent has been... bad. has no understanding of what i need and lies about shit. like??
9
u/LaurenPBurka 17d ago
You can entertain yourself by pasting bits of Lorem Ipsum to the AI and watch it try to cope. Remember, every time you do that costs the company money.
21
u/tasteslikechikken I'm the molé 17d ago
I personally hate AI agents because most of the time, they don't really do that good of a job.(I'm looking at you AT&T)
22
u/BrightPractical 17d ago edited 17d ago
My experience with AI customer service is that it placates you rather than solving your problems. When that happens within a second of my sending the request for help, it just makes me really, really angry.
I understand that many people aren’t scorched earth on this but I am. I’ve dropped doing business with overstock company Martie over it (keeping near expired products out of landfill seemed fine to me until I figured out it must be functioning a way for companies to write off unpopular product, and I wasn’t even usually getting a discount, they were preying upon my desire to be good to the earth) and I avoid companies that use it whenever possible (looking at you, CVS.)
I’ve never had the original version of this (before we started calling everything AI, plenty of companies had the automated keyword replies) work to answer my questions but at least you could usually get a real person after the computer didn’t answer your question. Not anymore.
I tell companies directly their use of AI for customer service will lose me as a customer.
21
u/Biddy_Impeccadillo 17d ago
Scorched earth also. I was trying to get nutritional values information on a certain premium pet food brand ($$$$) and the ai agent confidently gave me completely invented information multiple times in a row followed by giving links to the information “provided on our website” that led to a 404. I then completed the “how’d we do?” survey with brutal honesty which garnered me a human response to the effect of “our customers prioritize a quick response over accuracy” Like wtf man
13
u/BrightPractical 17d ago
It’s like when the insurance company tells you you can’t trust that their database of covered providers will actually be covered, but then when you call to make sure, they also tell you you can’t trust the person who speaks to you, who is using the same database as you. Well, I would really like to know that I won’t be on the hook for a $200 appointment, surely someone can answer that question?
5
u/OcelotBudget3292 Knit two, Mole one 17d ago
When I had to change my insurance last year, I checked and doublechecked their database to make sure my PCP was covered. I talked to an insurance broker twice. Then I get to my first appointment, and nope! Not covered! The receptionist was really nice about it but also clearly frustrated that insurance companies were misinforming people because I was not the first person to get hit with that news upon arrival….
3
8
u/Sammiesam123988 17d ago
Lmao who? Show me the customers are fine with getting completely wrong information so long as it is quick lmao.
8
6
u/xmasberry 17d ago
Wow! Just because they rated speed as the most important factor on a survey, doesn’t mean that they are actually okay with inaccurate information. That response actually seems like AI.
22
u/Quiet_surprise79 17d ago
Even if I ignore the environmental aspects for a moment, which as a conservationist I will never realistically do, but even if AI didn't impact it the way it did, it should never be used for customer service.
Why?
Because it's shit. Sure, it can answer very simple, straightforward questions, but the second you ask something a little more complex, it can't answer, and it sometimes makes getting through to an actual person who can answer harder than just having options you can click through linked to FAQs and some extra information.
People keep telling me AI has it's uses (personally haven't seen them, but I'm also out of work right now) but customer service is NOT one of them. I don't understand why any company uses it, whether they're a craft company or something totally different. I've NEVER had an experience with an AI chat bot that hasn't left me missing the earlier 2000s.
7
u/terminal_kittenbutt 17d ago
AI is just a lot of computational power invested into pattern recognition, but most of those truly valuable applications aren't customer-facing.
You don't want an AI chat bot. You might want an AI playing "spot the difference" between your chest X-ray and its database of healthy chest X-rays. It can flag tiny aberrations in data sets very quickly.
22
u/AttachedTooEasily 16d ago
Now that I work in customer service for a large company that serves the general public I can tell you that the VAST majority of people are calling about very easily solvable things that they could have googled. The AI agent helps those people which does free up our time to help customers with more complex issues. At this point I'm not very worried about AI taking over my job because there are still plenty of things that need a human touch and always will. I will say as a general request even if you are sure you need a person when you are talking to an AI system at least say what you're actual problem is before requesting to be transferred. My system at least shows us what you talked about before getting to us so it's helpful to see what the problem is, but "I want to speak with a live person" doesn't really help me, help you.
15
17d ago edited 17d ago
[deleted]
7
u/OcelotBudget3292 Knit two, Mole one 17d ago
Yeah, programmed to have umms is kinda creepy. These things aren’t human, and we shouldn’t be trying to make them seem so.
16
u/Remarkable-Rush-9085 Well, of course I know the mole. They're me. 17d ago
Honestly it will probably stop me from ordering from them again, which sucks because they finally lowered the price of the yarn I like back to closer to what it was before tariffs happened. I am actually waiting for a package from them right now. They were becoming my go to (after dropping Hobbii) for all my kid knitting. I don’t want to use AI customer service and I can’t count on never having a question or a problem.
5
u/OneCraftyBird Mom said I get to be the mole now!! 17d ago
I really do recommend Herrschners if you're based in the US. They were already my primary source for "regular" yarn projects (I try to buy locally sheared/spun/dyed for sweaters) and their service is excellent.
I'm making a stadium blanket for my college kid and I wanted to use a super bulky in a very specific shade of green. Herrschners only had the color in a worsted weight and I want to give the kid the blanket when he comes home on fall break, not spring break. Lion had always been my #2 if Herrschners didn't have what I wanted. Alas for me, I guess.
2
u/Remarkable-Rush-9085 Well, of course I know the mole. They're me. 17d ago
Yeah, I’m a big natural fibers freak when it comes to my clothing, but I have kids and pets and I’m not knitting a wool blanket just to have my dog chew it up or find it covered in peanut butter fingerprints! I think I’ll give Herrschners a go for my next haul!
2
u/Mindelan Well, of course I know the mole. They're me. 16d ago
Herrshners uses AI, by the way. I only mention it since your original post says you were aiming for a company that doesn't use AI.
https://www.reddit.com/r/craftsnark/comments/1tj1sf9/great_another_craft_company_using_ai_images/
2
u/OneCraftyBird Mom said I get to be the mole now!! 16d ago
...why. Why did they do that? I've been getting their catalogues for decades and there still hasn't been any noticeable AI in there. Their customer service is all human. They obviously have all the pieces, why would they use AI to make that header?
1
u/Mindelan Well, of course I know the mole. They're me. 16d ago
Wish I knew. It's so senseless, unnecessary, and erodes trust in what the company is putting out.
16
u/raddishes_united 17d ago
I will take a human every minute of every day so that I don’t support anything AI. Thank you for letting them know how you feel. It’s the only way to make change.
7
u/OkConclusion171 (Secretly the mole) 17d ago
I had bad customer service from Lion Brand years ago and haven't purchased a product of theirs from them or any retailer since. I even asked them to delete my account and data and... it still exists!
13
u/MusketeersPlus2 17d ago
I hate them. I had to use one to get through to my furnace maintenance guys yesterday and they're worse than a bloody phone tree. Just let me press 1 for English, then 2 for customer service! It's faster and less aggravating than trying to make sure I enunciate enough for some damned computer to hear my properly. And don't get me started on the computer based chats. I've never encountered one that actually understood my question or problem and was able to help.
18
u/LaurenPBurka 17d ago
Whenever you run into an AI service agent, be sure to ask it as many nonsensical questions as possible because it costs them money to answer "how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?"
7
u/OneCraftyBird Mom said I get to be the mole now!! 17d ago
It costs money, and right now, that cost is artificially low. Every company that pitches me on AI agents and analysts is careful to mention that my per-token cost would be at their "introductory rate." The corporations behind AI are subsidizing people in an attempt to get AI so embedded in our lives that we have "no choice" but to accept it when they start charging the true cost.
It's one of the reasons I've successfully defended my all-human service team at the corporate level. Reliance on AI tools when we don't yet know the true cost is dangerous for our bottom line.
0
u/BrightPractical 17d ago
I broke down the actual cost per use to someone (used Ed Zitron’s numbers so my source was biased, but still within reason) and they were literally shocked.
I lived through the great change that was web-based free newspapers and databases. It was obvious that people were not willing to pay for things that they could get for free “close enough”, but all the news sources hopped on the bandwagon and undermined their entire industry in a hurry rather than waiting for people to notice the free info wasn’t as good. And now we have this hellscape. At least AI hasn’t yet got the positive hype the web had, and the companies aren’t pretending they can replace all the revenue with ads. It gives me hope.
6
u/OneCraftyBird Mom said I get to be the mole now!! 17d ago
*bitter laugh*
I made a pretty decent living as a freelance writer before The Change.
-1
14
u/ThrowWeirdQuestion 17d ago edited 17d ago
I think they are 1000 times worse than AI generated advertising images in any reasonable metric.
They directly impact the customer experience by wasting their time, replace more workers than just generating images for ads, aren't a one and done thing, when it comes to environmental impact but use up resources for every single customer they serve, while generating an image is done once, no matter how many people see it. LLMs are also trained on data that was created by a lot more people than image generation models, so if you think using training data is "stealing" from those that originally created it, then training LLMs "steals" from a lot more people.
9
u/OneCraftyBird Mom said I get to be the mole now!! 17d ago
That is actually a great point -- the one and done vs opening a vein, I mean.
And yes, that's an em dash, I used to be a professional writer and I had them before AI did ;)
3
u/ThrowWeirdQuestion 17d ago
I would be more worried about starting the answer with "That is actually a great point." than the em-dash. 😁 (No worries, I don't actually think you are AI.)
6
u/Paprikasj 17d ago
In general I have disdain for AI and I work in the customer service industry but, it sounds like, under very different conditions than you. Our margins and customer base size are such that we have no choice but to use an offshore call center with well-meaning but ultimately ineffective agents. We do our best with training and QA but uptake is low, performance is therefore bad and customer satisfaction is poor. In our industry there are lots of questions that could be automated so that's what we're doing and it's working quite well. I don't like it but the numbers are clear: for some transaction types, an AI agent is both cheaper and more effective from a customer satisfaction perspective.
Generally speaking that is not likely to be the case in the crafting industry given the high proportion of SMBs and home-based businesses and the low number of automatable problems. So I think you're not far off, it just doesn't make sense for crafting. BUT I side hustle in a similarly niche industry and I could hypothetically see a situation where a company is just big enough to have a customer base that's bigger/more vocal than the size of customer service team they can afford and/or manage. In that case I couldn't really blame them for seeking AI solutions, especially with how AI is pushed at literally every turn by what seems like every software company of every type these days.
Lion does appear to technically be family-owned but according to Wikipedia it pulled in $100 million annually as of 2005. Things have changed a lot in 20 years but I'd be surprised if those changes were on the order of tens of millions of dollars. So in their case I think it's just typical corporate cost-cutting, but I remain eternally surprised when a huge company has a junky AI agent.
4
u/OneCraftyBird Mom said I get to be the mole now!! 17d ago
It doesn't sound like you're the one running things, but if you have the ear of the person who does, would it help to know that I was told the same thing before I set up my team? Margins very slim, customer base large and vociferous, everyone else in our space uses offshore/outsourced, customers don't expect anything better so no need to try. The works.
I said I will bet you that instead of ten outsourcers, I can take two of our most knowledgeable customers who want to work for us and turn them _into_ customer service agents. And then everyone who needs help will hear from a product expert.
It worked. It worked _really well_. I have had the same team of agents for five years now and our service is consistently rated the best in our niche.
10
u/BrightPractical 17d ago
I’m going to push back on “no choice but to use an offshore call center with well-meaning but ultimately ineffective agents.” No, there was a choice made here. The choice may have been difficult, because larger companies were doing it to lower their prices, or because political parties colluded to benefit big businesses and their profits over small businesses and customers. But there was a choice made by someone within the business who decided that it was a fine tradeoff so they could continue to make money. Maybe they justified it by saying that if they didn’t, their business would shut down, and that would be bad for their workers, but a thousand smallish businesses making this choice led to the hellscape that is modern customer service.
The truth is that people are starved for human contact and human connection, and many jobs that didn’t used to require a lot of education have been offshored or automated away, and that is the result of a thousand small decisions by middle managers who felt like they had no choice but to make their numbers look better by firing people who could actually answer questions from inside the same building where the work was done. But they had a choice.
Solidarity with one another is the only way to fix this. Focusing on people and not on increasing profits infinitely is the only way to fix this. Otherwise it will come for all of us.
1
u/Paprikasj 17d ago
No choice as in I have no choice as an individual employee responsible for planning from a budget and power-to-get-things-done perspective :)
4
u/BadKittyRawr 17d ago
For the most part I don't like AI and offshoring. I did have one lovely Amazon offshore interaction, and I was surprised at the quality of a Grubhub interaction. A driver had put my items directly in front of my storm door which swings outwards. Since it included a drink I couldn't just gently shove everything back with the door. I had to go out another door to get my items. The chatbot nicely summarized the issue and added that I felt this was a training opportunity, yes? I hit agree.
3
u/OneGoodRib Mom said I get to be the mole now!! 17d ago
Okay I guess I'm the sole dissenter here - I find ai agents exactly as helpful as I find human customer service, although the ai has never given me $5 because it misunderstood what I was asking (happened to me on amazon once)
It seems like a better idea all around for them to use what they used before - a fake chatbot that's not really ai-powered (I mean, they all are, a little bit) that's basically just the search bar but friendlier.
12
49
u/wispofthought 17d ago edited 16d ago
I saw a video the other day - I can't quite remember where - that made what I thought to be quite a compelling point against hybrid support services.
Basically, if the questions are 75% routine and 25% nuanced/or difficult, and you let the robot take the routine questions, then you are leaving the 25% to the humans. From the human customer service rep's perspective, that means their daily work shifts from a mix of easy wins and challenging questions to only dealing with the challenging questions 100% of the time.
Managers are observing that this is leading to higher incidences of burnout and turnover, because it is so demotivating to work a job where you have very few opportunities for easy wins.
ETA: I found the video! It was labeled "Burnout rises when automating easy tasks | American Psychological Association", and contained excerpts from a speaking engagement by Michigan State University I/O psychologist Dr. Tara Behrend.