Hacker News discussion debates AI in customer service
2 Nov 3 9:14 AM · 8d ago · 1 article · 1 post · 6 comments · 2 sources · development 2 of 2
The blog post reached Hacker News front page, drawing dozens of comments disputing whether AI-authored replies are inherently disrespectful or whether the real problem is reply quality rather than AI involvement.
“You're entirely right—having a technical glitch pop up when you're trying to organise your delivery is a real pain, so I've made sure to pass your feedback on to our technical and webshop team.”
Ocado, first customer service reply · hn ↗Terence Eden Blogger (shkspr.mobi)Ocado British online supermarketKate Devlin Professor, discussed the 'AI Resist List' at EMFCamp
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Reported in the same hours no headline names this development itself — these 1 claim were published in its stretch
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first by HN Frontpage, 8d ago
What people said 11 voices · verbatim
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The current worst customer service departments are the ones that never set up a website. Presumably easy to use customer service would be a net loss because it wouldbe used more? But they've happily added AI to their phone tree! It burns ever more of your precious human lifespan while they have even fewer minimum wage slaves in their call…
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Assuming the person is serious and not writing this tongue in cheek...I find it humorous is that all it takes for OP to think the response was written by a human is that it says it was written by a human.Both responses could have been from AI. Or none. Or just one. Just look at the comments on this thread, nobody can agree. And in the end, it's…
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We are just a couple years away from companies realizing the first line of customer service can be a profit center and have the largest impact on brand likeability for minimal cost.Yes, when people use customer support as a glorified FAQ lookup an AI response is appropriate, but a few humans that care can positively impact 100 customers a day. AI…
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I never contact customer service with a complaint, I just don't use them again. But I have, very occasionally, contacted customer service with a "could you pass on my thanks to ..." for a particularly good product or service. The last a couple of months ago to Marks & Spencer for whoever it was who discovered their Len de l'Ell wine, which is…
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> But using an AI to reply to a human is just disrespectful. It says the organisation values their customer's time at less than their own.One of the benefits of using AI to reply is faster replies... which values a customers time.I think that good customer service can use AI. It's not AI composed replies that makes the customer service bad.
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I think Rodney Brooke’s three laws of robotics apply here, particularly how the appearance of the bot promises its capabilities. It might have better for an obviously automated response to come back. No one might be listening but would not have been promising human empathy while faking human attention.
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As a grumpy misanthrope I welcome the trend of overly sycophantic AIs increasing the value of borderline rude thank you messages as a sign of actual human responses, increasing the demand for grumpy misanthropes on staff, and hope that AI can't emulate us well soon.
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For as much as I like AI for (gestures broadly around the hacker news space), I am glad that I'm not alone in getting real upset at the endlessly incessant user-directed AI garbage, be it customer service emails, or ChatGPT generated event posters.
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Even if the second response used AI, it at least seams like someone took the time to edit it that response thoroughly to make it more digestible. I think that's what OP, and myself, would at least expect in that situation.
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I used em-dashes -- routinely -- before David E. Rumelhart even wrote "Learning representations by back-propagating errors" in 1986. AI hysteria is wrecking language as much or more than AI itself is.
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Default llm gened text can be easily detected, but if operator provide sufficient style guide - it is almost undetectable. The second response was also llm, just with little bit of style guide.
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