And no one that has an option should take them up on those job offers.
They have shown what they will do again as soon as they think AI gets good enough.
Klarna Hiring Back Human Help After Going All-In on AI
Submitted 13 hours ago by Novocirab@feddit.org to technology@lemmy.world
https://gizmodo.com/klarna-hiring-back-human-help-after-going-all-in-on-ai-2000600767
Comments
flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
boreengreen@lemm.ee 8 hours ago
AI support is equivalent to an interactive and searchable FAQ.
SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 hours ago
A FAQ that may have incorrect, often contradictory information.
Guidy@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
It sounds like Klarna is a nightmare that should be avoided as much as possible.
Libra@lemmy.ml 8 hours ago
They had to invest how much money into AI to realize this thing that literally anyone on the street would’ve happily told them for free? And they probably paid some consultant even more money to tell them it was a good idea.
aesthelete@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Consultancy is where the dollars are at. You get big money to tell people to implement things that won’t work, and then your contract is up and you’re out of there before shit hits the fan.
Libra@lemmy.ml 3 minutes ago
Yeah, paying someone else to tell you what to do with your business when they will bear none of the consequences for the things they tell you to do are is just mad.
thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
With all the AI rollout in customer support, I’ve essentially built up a habit of almost immediately trying to get in touch with a human if the bot doesn’t give me what I’m looking for right away. My experience is that in most cases, the bot will try to walk me in circles, recommending that I try stuff I’ve already tried (that’s why I’m contacting support). In all those cases, the bot isn’t saving the company any time, it’s just wasting my time and making me irritated.
In some cases it does save them support capacity, if only because I eventually give up on getting any support and just quit the service.
EmptySlime@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 hours ago
Well yeah the AI support is just the next iteration of confusing telephone trees and long wait times. The direct hope is that they make it just convoluted enough that a chunk of people that they before would have to “waste money” serving and fixing whatever problem they had will instead just give up without opening them up to liability for denying service. Only now they can do it while hiring even fewer actual people to handle the cases that get through.
chaosCruiser@futurology.today 12 hours ago
Klarna claimed that AI chatbots were handling two-thirds of customer service conversations within their first month of deployment and went on to claim that AI was doing the work of 700 customer service agents. The problem is that it’s really doing the work of 700 really bad agents, and that quality took a toll.
I think the problem here was in correctly identifying which tasks are simple enough for a bad customer service AI to handle. Anything more complicated than that should be given to a human.
SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 7 hours ago
Every time I interact with AI, I feel like I gotta take a shit.
But then again I get a lot of fiber in my diet
Abrinoxus@thelemmy.club 10 hours ago
when the fog clears…
Merlin@lemm.ee 13 hours ago
They are still going ai first on everything but customer support though. Any person who quits apparently won’t get the position filled by anyone else, whoever is left needs to try to use ai to make up for that person
Libra@lemmy.ml 8 hours ago
So, your bog-standard ‘we’re improving the company by making everyone do the work of 2 people on the salary of 1’ routine. :P
Psaldorn@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Didn’t take long.
kaeurennetwo@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
I love technology but I hate censorship.
flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz 13 hours ago
I’m not sure there will be a difference either way. Customer service jobs spent decades trying to train humans to act as much as robots as possible. Of course replacing them with a shitty bot seemed to make sense, they were already pretending to be shitty bots.
Any “quality” in customer support comes from individuals circumventing company rules to provide actual support to the customer. AI can’t do that.
Draegur@lemm.ee 11 hours ago
You’re right, absolutely spot on, about several things but ONE IN PARTICULAR is this:
A human being helping a customer is, quite literally, an act of circumvention. Customer service EXISTS, SPECIFICALLY, for scenarios that require exceptions and skilled, knowledgeable internal maneuvering within, between, and around the cold mechanisms of machinery and policy. We tend to think of, say, purchasing items at a store as standard operation, for instance. But really, from the perspective of the business, its objective is to RESTRICT access to goods and services. The cashier manages exceptions to this goal. If the company has its way, it would take your money while relinquishing NOTHING.
uranibaba@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
I do not agree with the idea that humans are being trained to act like robots. Any company with a customer service department is likely tracking the root causes of their customers’ issues. With enough data, they can identify the most common problems and their solutions. If the goal is to resolve a customer’s issue as quickly as possible (which seems like a reasonable assumption), it makes sense to guide the customer through the most common solutions first, as that will likely solve the problem.
If someone works in customer service and repeats the same script daily, it’s understandable that they may come across as robotic due to sheer boredom. A skilled customer service representative can recognize when to use the script and when to deviate. However, if a company fails to hire the right people and does not offer a fair salary, those best suited for the role are unlikely to take the job.
MagicShel@lemmy.zip 9 hours ago
My wife is a customer service manager/trainer. Hiring actually competent people who know how to just listen to the customer and understand their needs is apparently really fucking hard. I’ve heard some stories of such dumbfuckery…
And once they are in, HR/lawyers make it so fucking hard to fire anyone. If you get a decent customer service person, either as an employer or customer, appreciate them.
Libra@lemmy.ml 8 hours ago
And this why you have to suffer through those lengthy recordings that tell you about a bunch of shit that generally doesn’t apply to your situation before you can even use the menu, much less talk to a person. I am disabled, I have had to be on the phone with the Social Security Administration, Medicare, my insurance company, and various state benefits agencies probably 15-20 times a year for the past ~14 years, and I can count on one hand the number of times those ‘common solutions’ were even remotely applicable. I don’t even need fingers to count the number of times they have actually contained the solution to my issue, because it has literally never happened.
Once you get to a person who can make an assessment about what’s going on it makes sense for them to cover a few basics (I used to do tech support, I know how much time a simple, ‘Are you sure it’s plugged in?’ can save), but replacing customer service with AI means you’re pretty much stuck in those recordings for your entire call. Now to be fair this can be done better than most places do it. I shop on amazon a fair bit (can’t drive so I order most things online) and when I have issues I honestly prefer dealing with the livechat AI than calling because it’s a much faster and smoother experience and they can quickly bump you over to an actual agent when there’s a weird thing going on that’s outside of its scope. But most companies don’t have Amazon’s customer service budget to do shit like that well, so usually what I get is ‘If you’re calling about XYZ, hang up and dial this number. Did you know that if your birthday is on an odd-numbered day blahblah-ad-blahblah? If the crescent moon is waning and the distant hills are draining and the watchful eye is straining…’ etc.