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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

EVEN if the AI is a little rough around the edges with relational calls, just solving for transactional calls with no hold is a massive win.

You keep saying that reducing call time is the "win." It seems like that the only metric you're measuring. If so, your product is a failure, not a success.

This is HEALTHCARE. You don't get to do "rough around the edges." You don't get to dismiss edge cases.

I also work in healthcare tech. My company doesn't permit such things because people die. I'll write it again because it's a point that tech fetishes can't get into their heads:

People die.

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Do you know what NPS is? That's how the comment started. Patients like it. Because the alternative is to stay on hold for 20+ minutes, and then get it wrong. (Or have no pharmacies except Optum's and Express Scripts).

Good for you - I want in the ICU delivering care during COVID as a frontline clinician. You don't get to pull this line.

NPS is notoriously unreliable. When I’m frustrated with a stupid support clanker, I don’t wait for another different clanker to ask me how it did. I hang up.

If that’s how you’re measuring patient satisfaction, you’re completely clueless.

It’s probably how their payor measures performance.

But I thought the issue with customer surveys was how biased they could be toward negative experiences cuz nobody else is angry enough to respond.

They have so many possible biases that are hard to control for.

They can be biased toward positive experiences too, if customers feel the job of the person that helped them is on the line.

What’s better for a manager/executive wanting insight into “how happy are my customers” other than their accounting numbers?

Their accounting numbers, sure.

NPS is asking your customers "how likely are you recommend us to a friend or colleague?". That's definitely not an accounting number. If you care about this, you can instead ask your _new_ customers if someone recommended you. Or you could hire a third party to do an independent survey among your target demographic.

I find it hard to believe that patients like it given how sales work for these sorts of services - customer satisfaction is often the lowest priority given it’s ultimately a cost cutting service.

I live in a major metro and there are no pharmacies left except the largest ones. All my problems have to do with insurance not covering things, and insurance asks me to ask the pharmacy, pharmacy asks me to ask the insurance, and often insurance then asks me to ask my doctor to adjust the dosage cause they won’t cover that many days. Customers are batted around and I don’t see any AI that will solve this problem which is structural. The only value I see in AI is cost savings to replace humans, which is to say practically none as a customer over a website to check status and try to refill things.

Not to mention my insurer will only authorize >30 day scripts if you use their own wholly owned mail order service. Want/need to get in person, locally? 30 days or less.

> You keep saying that reducing call time is the "win."

"AI" reduces call time here... as I hang up and look for an alternative supplier.

As if the techs making $15/hr answering the phone don't make mistakes?

But at least he's responsible. And we accept that humans make mistakes.

However, when the mistake is made by the replacement that cost one of your community members their job for a few pennies gain...

The bar for these systems is higher than the bar for humans.

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