alt Hacker NewsYou are right. We are seeing a transition from the user as a customer to the user as a resource. It's almost like a cartel of shitty treatment.
I don't work for the public transit company; I introduce immigrants to Berlin's public transit. To answer to the broader question, good documentation is one of the many little things that affect how you feel about a company. The BVG clearly cares about that, because their marketing department is famously competent. Good documentation also means that fewer people will queue at their service centre and waste an employee's time. Documentation is the cheaper form of customer service.
Besides, how people feels about the public transit company does matter, because their funding is partly a political question. No one will come to defend a much-hated, customer-hostile service.
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> Documentation is the cheaper form of customer service.
Thank you so much for saying this. Trying to convince anyone of the importance of documentation feels like an uphill battle. Glad to see that I'm not completely crazy.
> We are seeing a transition from the user as a customer to the user as a resource.
I'd argue that this started 30 years ago when automated phone trees started replacing the first line of workers and making users figure out how to navigate where they needed to in order to get the service they needed.
I can't remember if chat bots or "knowledge bases" came first, but that was the next step in the "figure it out yourself" attitude corporations adopted (under the guise of empowering users to "self help").
Then we started letting corporations use the "we're just too big to actually have humans deal with things" excuse (eg online moderation, or paid services with basically no support).
And all these companies look at each other to see who can lower the bar next and jump on the bandwagon.
It's one of my "favorite" rants, I guess.
The way I see this next era going is that it's basically going to become exclusively the users' responsibility to figure out how to talk to the bots to solve any issue they have.
“It's almost like a cartel of shitty treatment.”
Thank you. I love it when someone poetically captures a feeling I’ve been having so succinctly.
Counterpoint - I think it’s going to become much easier for hobbyists and motivated small companies to make bigger projects. I expect to see more OSS, more competition, and eventually better quality-per-price (probably even better absolute quality at the “$0 / sell your data” tier).
Sure, the megacorps may start rotting from the inside out, but we already see a retrenchment to smaller private communities, and if more of the benefits of the big platforms trickle down, why wouldn’t that continue?
Nicbou, do you see AI as increasing your personal output? If it lets enthusiastic individuals get more leverage on good causes then I still have hope.