AI chatbots are making customer service harder for many shoppers

In short: More companies are using AI chatbots for customer service, and many customers say it is making it harder to solve real problems.

What's going on

A Wired reporter describes spending months trying to recover a missing $2,000 electric bike after FedEx marked it as delivered and “signed for” by someone else. Instead of quickly reaching a person who could fix the issue, the reporter says they were repeatedly pushed into automated chat systems, not just with FedEx, but also with the bike company, a bank, a credit card company, and even the local police department.

A chatbot is a computer program that talks to you like a person in a chat window or on a phone menu (like a very stubborn receptionist who will not transfer your call). In this case, FedEx opened a claim and later confirmed the bike was missing, but told the customer to contact the shipper for reimbursement. The bike company reportedly got FedEx to cover only the shipping cost, leaving the customer out about $1,700.

Wired connects this story to a broader shift. A Gartner survey published in April found 31% of customer service leaders said they have already reduced staff or plan to reduce staff because of AI. Separate consumer research cited in the story found 59% of people said they were frustrated with AI customer service, and 85% said they would rather speak to a real person.

What to watch

Some experts warn that companies may accept worse service as a trade-off for lower costs, at least in the short term. The key question is whether businesses will make it easier to reach a trained human when something goes wrong, especially for high-value problems like missing deliveries.

Source: Wired