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by mikhmha 663 days ago
Recently I saw the process of filling for 2 insurance claims through 2 different entities. First one used a great ai voice agent that does the process of filtering your query. it understood me perfectly. But then I still had to wait in line for an actual agent. Ok wait for 6 hours. Whatever. Call again - the 2nd time going through the same agent is painful. Its so slow. And all this just to connect me to a human - who was EXCELLENT. What did ai add? And for now a human has to be involved in any complex permission changes to your account. AND I like that.

The 2nd agency I called them through phone. No ai. But it is excellent cause they do async processing. so you reserve a slot and they call you back. i don't care if those are not answered urgently. Because I just want to talk to a human.
2 comments
structural 663 days ago
AI lets the agency better be able to afford to hire and keep the excellent humans around to solve complex problems. It's better than a human that also can't fix your issue themselves and has to ask you to transfer to the other person. Ideally, the AI agent would have let you book a callback time with the specific right human who's best able to fix your issue. Some companies are able to do this, and you, the customer, never realize that of the 100 specialists in the building, you got connected to the one person who understands your issue and has the tools to fix it.

Customer service is hard because it has to filter out 90% noise, 9% fairly straightforward tasks, and the <1% of complex issues that need to be sent to the right human.

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mikhmha 663 days ago
DONT get me wrong. What you're saying I actually support. If this allows that company to have quality staff I'm all for it. The less time we both spend on each other the better. So just offer async processing.
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bruce511 663 days ago
Your point is that AI is bad at some things, and in some cases misused. Which is of course abundantly true.

But equally it doesn't prove, or even assert, the opposite. A bicycle may be bad at cross-country road trips, but that doesn't make it a bad choice for some other situations.

Hence my earlier comment - I (and I suspect others) are finding it useful for some tasks. That is not to imply it is good at all tasks.

Is it over-hyped? Of course yes. Welcome to IT where every new thing is over-hyped all the time.

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