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Comment by WD-42 | Hacker News Reader

How? Businesses will use this to justify removing what few actual human support staff they have left. Nobody, and I mean it, nobody calls customer support because they want to talk to a computer. It’s the last resort for problems that usually can’t be accomplished via the already existing technical flows available via computer.

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That's not true. I recently called to make an appointment. I don't care if it's an AI. I would actually prefer it, because I wouldn't feel bad about taking a long time to pick the best time. Don't you think you're being a bit dogmatic about this?

I have to feel that an online booking system is substantially lower tech than an ai voice assitant chatbot, and makes it even easier to ruminate as you pick the time that works for you.

In my case, the business did have human support assistants, but didn't do reservations via the phone. I had to switch to the web app for that, which was annoying (I was driving?). I guess doing user identification over the phone and scheduling the appointment are time-consuming for the human assistant, while these are some of the few things an app can do well. I presume the logic is to preserve human assistants for actually complicated or dynamic assistance, for the sake of cost-efficiency. A voice llm can bring down the cost of these basic-but-time-consuming interactions.

Beyond true.

I wonder what Amazon's goals are, as an example. Currently, at least on the .ca website, there is no way to even get to chat to fix problems. All their spider text of help options, now always lead back to the return page.

So it's call them (which you can only find the number via Google.)

I suspect they're so disfunctional, that they don't understand why the massive uptick in calls, so then they slap AI in via phone too.

And so now that's slow and AI drivel. I guess soon I'll just have to do chargebacks!? Eg, if a package is missing or whatever.

Interesting, I regularly use chat-based support on amazon.ca to speak with (what I presume is) a real human after none of the control flow paths adequately resolve my issue. I've always found the support quick to reply and very helpful.

Granted, it's been 1-2 weeks since I had an issue, so it may have changed since then, or it could be only released to a subset of users.

I wonder if I'm stuck on the (A)wseome/(B)ad side of A/B testing.

Amazon is generally good at 1) resolving an issue in your favor and 2) getting you to a human if needed but gosh does it feel like I've taken a different path to do so every single time I'ever needed support.

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