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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

You get filled with rage because call center tech support is not for you. Call center support rarely is allowed to do anything you can't already do online and they are rarely able to tell you secret information that can't already be found online, and you have already tried online.

Call centers exist to serve the people who can't or won't RTFM online. You do RTFM online, so... rage.

AI-based support is likely to be the same: A chatbot version of the same old information you can already get on the FAQ and Troubleshooting section online. I don't know why we expect it will be different or suddenly unlock some Secret They Dont Want You To Know.

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> Call center support rarely is allowed to do anything you can't already do online

This is not my experience at all.

In the past couple weeks, I’ve had to call in to businesses to get the following resolved because it wasn’t something I could do online:

1. Get some bank charges reversed because the online interface explicitly said I wouldn’t get charged for the actions that prompted the charges. 2. Get DRIP enabled on one of my investment accounts. 3. Downgrade a credit card product to a different credit card. 4. Get pricing information about a financial product that wasn’t provided on a banking website. 5. Follow up with the fibre provider in my area because they’ve somehow connected every house on my street but tell me that my house isn’t eligible. (TBF this one isn’t actually resolved yet.) 6. (Twice ) call a bank because legitimate transactions got flagged as fraud and denied. 7. Get my address on file updated with a political party I’d donated to so they’d stop sending mail to an old address.

I can think of at least one scenario where you need that call center worker. Let's say internet goes down in your area, but you're not sure where the problem is. Allowing a customer to call for a technician to come check the connection in your house might be a waste if the problem is regional. If too many people do that, the waste of resources compound. And you could argue that AI could diagnose where the problem is and choose what to do, but maybe it can't. You need that human to disambiguate the course of action.

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