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Inside: A tale of three customer service chatbots; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2025/11/12/sor…

#Pluralistic

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A queue of people in 1950s garb, colorized in garish tones, waiting for a wicket with a sign labeled SERVICE. Behind the counter stands a male figure in a suit whose head has been replaced with a set of chattering teeth. Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

Pluralistic: A tale of three customer service chatbots (12 Nov 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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#Pluralistic

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I'm on a tour with my new book, the international bestseller *Enshittification*!

Catch me next in #Lisbon, #Cardiff, #Oxford and #London!

Full schedule with dates and links at:

pluralistic.net/tour

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Pluralistic: Announcing the Enshittification tour (30 Sep 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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#london #lisbon #oxford #cardiff
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This entry was edited (1 day ago)
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#20yrsago #10yrsago #15yrsago
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#10yrsago #5yrsago #1yrago
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#london #oxford #cardiff
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#london #toronto
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#seattle #sandiego #Madison
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Simon 🐮
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> more careful not to help…if they can help it.

👀 I see what you did there

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particularly like this illo, for some reason. And idk why but the respectable ppl participating being green feels apt, somehow. 🤷

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PhillyFan
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One of my first jobs was in a support role for a technology company and I never understood why a company would want to outsource customer care. From my experience, customers would often contact us with a simple question, but the easy answer wasn't going to get to the root cause of their problem. As a human, we could interact with them to quickly understand what they were trying to accomplish and propose alternative solutions based on our knowlege and experience. 1/

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We were fast and efficient, delivering to the customer exactly what they needed.

If there was a lot or production problem, we would see it first and be able to diagnose the problem or stop shipment preventing other customers from experiencing the same problem while corrective action could be taken. The best kind of problem to have is one your customer never experiences. 2/

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Outsourcing and AI chatbots might provide fast answers to simple questions as long as you can be certain that is all your customers will ever need. Just be aware that you also give up a lot in the process. fin/
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Satisfied customers want to help your company succeed. During support calls they disclose things like we're expanding and will need more of your equipment next year. They will even volunteer who is in charge of the expansion and how to get in touch providing excellent sales leads to your team. 4/
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Happy customers purchase way more stuff from you and are very willing to try new things you have on offer if they know you will support them should they experience a problem. They will look to your company first to see if you have XYZ product. We would notice repeat requests and could propose new products or product line extensions. It was invaluable info that helped us to stay ahead of the competition. 3/
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@gjholmes
It's Yet Another Example of Sam Vimes Boots.

It's astonishing how often doing the right thing equals doing the profitable thing. Sara Taber has a good discussion of how this applies in farming. Unfortunately, that's apparently harder to show on the balance sheet you hand the venture capitalist. (And also takes more work & planning.)

youtube.com/watch?v=mHru7TweGb…


Good Farms Are Smart With Money

Financial literacy for farms matters!If you're a farmer, thinking of starting a farm, or just want to know what's happening with our farm economy and food pr...
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@gjholmes Best small software product company I worked for had its CEO on the support line. Meant we knew what customers were doing and what features they actually wanted... Never as good after we got too big and that ended.
@PhillyFan
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