alt Hacker NewsThe one AI customer support experience I’ve actually enjoyed was last winter in a cold snap when my pipes froze. Drove to a Walmart to find a space heater and of course they were sold out. Called my local Lowe’s, got an AI agent, asked if any space heaters were in stock, it told me the one model left and the aisle to find it. Drove there and got what I needed without a fuss.
That’s the exception of course, literally every other time I’ve had to deal with an AI agent it can’t deal with the slightest deviation from its assumptions. Most of the time I call support, it’s because I already tried the automated options and they didn’t work for me. The fuzzy, nonstandard situations AI customer support agents suck are the one thing customer support is most needed for. I would’ve just used the website to check space heaters in stock if I hadn’t been driving.
I had a mixed incredible/horrible experience with Claude's AI support agent. First, I suspected there was a particular problem with the API access, and I articulated it and said, "can you give me a way to test this theory and prove that the problem is on your end? Python is acceptable" and it spit out a python test program that proved the problem was on their end. Then it turned a corner and spent 30 minutes insisting that it was going to connect me with a real person who could fix the problem for me before finally admitting that the whole thing was a boondoggle and it had no way to connect me with an actual person, but maybe I should come back to the chat in a day or two and see if anyone noticed and responded.
The real interesting thing was that early on in that 30 minutes, it gave me very clear instructions about how to get a live agent (including a quoted trigger phrase like "I would like to speak to a live agent" or something), which made me believe it was possible, which ultimately made me resist the slow realization that that was a complete fabrication. It was a very effective way to waste my time.