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Comment by nicce | Hacker News Reader

Is the call worth making if it is not worth answering?

If the internet didn't exist this would be incredibly useful. Call the cinema to find out when the movie is playing, call a company to find out their refund policy and get troubleshooting steps for their products, etc.

Now I prefer to get this information from websites. But there is still a chunk of the population (mostly the older half) who prefer calling over websites, and maybe that's true even for these chat bots

Yes. The alternative these days is often a maze of a phone menu. If I can just say my issue in complete sentences and the AI routes it appropriately and otherwise acts on it as I want, that's pretty good.

Then the AI misunderstands you and you end up in a loop of autogenerated responses, or just a "please visit our website for this inquiry."

I play a looping mp3 of "agent, advisor, assistant, human" when on a robocall and just wait for it to pipe me to a person. Talking to an AI is beneath me.

You used to be able to break of of clothing calls. DHL refused to deliver a parcel of paid for next day delivery on, and sent an automated email saying “phone us to pick it up at depot”

Phone them and the only options were to get that information - no way to find out what depot it was at or how to collect it.

DHL now in the “do not use” file, but that only works when my supplier gives a choice, and is only relevant when all delivery providers are not identical.

I'm sorry, I don't understand, please state your issue in complete sentences. You can say things like "help placing an order", "track my order" or "check inventory stock"

That's the old speech recognition stuff that just matches keywords. LLMs can infer what you want pretty flexibly.

I mean yeah if it's a bad model then it will be bad. If it's good then it's good. It's not like getting hold of a human in the call center guarantees anything either. They can be pretty useless too.

I'm sorry, I don't understand, please state your issue in complete sentences. You can say things like "help placing an order", "track my order" or "check inventory stock"

> If I can just say my issue in complete sentences and the AI routes it appropriately and otherwise acts on it as I want, that's pretty good.

I fear that it is not used for routing, rather used for completely replacing the real person.

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