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> “We refuse to operate as the customer service representatives of your company,” the officials add. “Proper investment in response and mitigation is mandatory.

by Keegs 3y ago

> “We refuse to operate as the customer service representatives of your company,” the officials add. “Proper investment in response and mitigation is mandatory.” It’s crazy to me how tech companies pretend customer support is not a critical business function. HN and Twitter are not your contact center, and law enforcement is not your Tier 2 support. With Google in particular I keep hearing that, it isn’t that their customer service is bad, it’s that it doesn’t exist at all. Any exec should find this embarrassing.

colpabar 3y ago
Embarrassing? It's an accomplishment for them! They're saving the company a huge amount of money. Employees are expensive, even the ones in the third-world you can pay $2/hr.
- myself248 3y ago
  As long as it's legal for them to do this, they will.
- rschneid 3y ago
  Exactly, these diffuse international entities are merely responding to structures of incentives which are ultimately the government’s responsibility to create and enforce. Contrary to the quote in the article, proper investment in response and mitigation has, so far, been proven to ~not~ be mandatory for making incredible amounts of cash, which is the primary objective of these behemoths. Now that externalized costs are starting to personally affect members of government and enforcement, I hope we’ll see some meaningful regulation around accounts on private-but-essential digital platforms resembling a general bill of rights rather than letting private companies get away with nearly anything by default, as is the current state. However merely asking these pseudo-nation-states masquerading as companies to behave differently and expecting to be taken seriously is good for a laugh!
- 6510 3y ago
  Oddly I thought this niche would have been the first target for LLM's. It could seriously outperform human support for some queries. The user claims their account was stolen, if they fill the report and attempted to log in from a known location/ip using a previously valid password you can immediately block unusual spending and use the attempt to further confirm they lost control over their account. Can quickly gather all kinds of fuzzy data, do they still control their phone/pc? Are they sending dubious messages? The real fun begins where scammers try to do similar things simultaneously with multiple stolen accounts. If you bother to gather the data the patterns are much easier to find.
  - rixthefox 3y ago
    Given that Canada Airlines killed their Chatbot because they were legally held accountable for the policy their chatbot had created in their case, I think many of these companies are thinking twice before allowing an LLM to respond to people out of fear of the words of the chatbot making legal issues for them.
    - 6510 3y ago
      It can serve canned responses np. If there is a need to freestyle it has to properly explain it is a chat bot and that the response isn't legally binding. You can pretty much say anything if you put a question mark behind it?
    - creer 3y ago
      Killing it may have been more of a PR move than anything. Airlines have regularly been caught in incorrect prices listed on their systems. This is not new. Searching for them is basically a sport. They do just fine with a few incorrect prices flowing through the system. Aliexpress has delivery companies, vendors and a complaint system that are total chaos. Which ends in disputes making it into credit card and paypal disputes systems. That probably still works just fine for them. Companies regularly claim that "oops, that employee made a mistake in telling you that" and I suspect most customers let them. So that I expect it's going to be the result: companies will use chatbots, will try to strong arm customers into "correcting chatbot mistakes" and in the end live with a few results against them.
mschuster91 3y ago
> It’s crazy to me how tech companies pretend customer support is not a critical business function. Because at a certain point of size, it isn't. Even at 10k customers you don't care about losing a few dozen out of frustration, it's just normal attrition - much less at the billions of customers that Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft and the other corporate chunguses have. There will always be enough fresh customers. All hail the bottom line, because that is all that matters in a society that doesn't give a damn about externalized costs.
ToucanLoucan 3y ago
Can anyone give me a downside to shutting down every social media website tomorrow? And yes I know that isn't a realistic option, it's just, what do these companies actually provide beyond pissing everyone off, enabling harassment, and surveillance? The only business I can think of that's even more a net negative than social media is perhaps those companies selling car warranties.
- vidalee 3y ago
  The vast majority of people on social medias aren't there for following politics or corporations, but connecting with friends and communities.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    I genuinely think that social media inserting themselves in the connections between friends, family, and community is doing harm to those connections. It would be better if people did that directly with each other rather than through an intermediary.
- surgical_fire 3y ago
  There are actually many upsides.
  - kderbyma 3y ago
    I'll wait.
- UncleEntity 3y ago
  > Can anyone give me a downside to shutting down every social media website tomorrow? Perhaps the biggest violation of the First Amendment in the history of the US? If that's not "abridging the freedom of speech" I don't know what is...
  - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    I think it's become abundantly clear that absolute free speech is not an unalloyed good for anyone, especially when confounded by the profit motives of massive corporations.
lotsofpulp 3y ago
Facebook users are not customers. They are the beneficiaries of free computing resources and bandwidth. And they are free to use 2FA to secure their accounts (might even be required). If people mishandle their login credentials, that is not Facebook’s problem. If someone is a victim of a crime, that is the judicial system’s problem.
- BizarroLand 3y ago
  >Facebook users are not customers. They are the beneficiaries of free computing resources and bandwidth. And they are free to use 2FA to secure their accounts (might even be required). >If people mishandle their login credentials, that is not Facebook’s problem. If someone is a victim of a crime, that is the judicial system’s problem. I'll reference this next time someones asks me to show them an example of something that is both legal and unethical
Ajay-p 3y ago
One of my great fears in life is getting locked out of a Google or Meta account. I have resolved in myself that should that occur the account is forever lost because there is no way to get support. The best that one can hope for is that a media publication takes up their plight and writes about it, or they know someone who is employed by one of those corporations. Even when customers pay for a product, Meta and Google customer service is horrible.
- morgango 3y ago
  I had similar concerns so I at least moved my email to Fastmail and then set up a google account tied to it instead of Gmail. When you create the google account, you can just choose to use an existing email address (see https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/27441?hl=en#existingemail https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/27441?hl=en#exist...). Also, with fastmail if you use your own domain you can have any email address automatically forwarded to the same box. So, if your gmail account for "me@mydomain.com" gets shut down you can start a new one with "myself@mydomain.com" and you will still have access to all your customer service emails and info that may have been sent in the past. Any other provider should do, but I have liked fastmail a lot. SSO + Gmail at the same provider = risk of permanent loss of access.
- ahazred8ta 3y ago
  Actually you CAN get real human SLA tech support from google. If you pay $20/yr for https://one.google.com https://one.google.com storage you also get paid support for google account snafus. No joke.
bongoman42 3y ago
In one of the success stories of startups the founder's explicit message was 'Let some fires burn'. The fires were people complaining to customer support. The point was you can move faster if you don't bother about resolving issues for a few pesky customers.

by Keegs 3y ago

colpabar 3y ago

Embarrassing? It's an accomplishment for them! They're saving the company a huge amount of money. Employees are expensive, even the ones in the third-world you can pay $2/hr.

myself248 3y ago
As long as it's legal for them to do this, they will.
rschneid 3y ago
Exactly, these diffuse international entities are merely responding to structures of incentives which are ultimately the government’s responsibility to create and enforce. Contrary to the quote in the article, proper investment in response and mitigation has, so far, been proven to ~not~ be mandatory for making incredible amounts of cash, which is the primary objective of these behemoths. Now that externalized costs are starting to personally affect members of government and enforcement, I hope we’ll see some meaningful regulation around accounts on private-but-essential digital platforms resembling a general bill of rights rather than letting private companies get away with nearly anything by default, as is the current state. However merely asking these pseudo-nation-states masquerading as companies to behave differently and expecting to be taken seriously is good for a laugh!
6510 3y ago
Oddly I thought this niche would have been the first target for LLM's. It could seriously outperform human support for some queries. The user claims their account was stolen, if they fill the report and attempted to log in from a known location/ip using a previously valid password you can immediately block unusual spending and use the attempt to further confirm they lost control over their account. Can quickly gather all kinds of fuzzy data, do they still control their phone/pc? Are they sending dubious messages? The real fun begins where scammers try to do similar things simultaneously with multiple stolen accounts. If you bother to gather the data the patterns are much easier to find.
- rixthefox 3y ago
  Given that Canada Airlines killed their Chatbot because they were legally held accountable for the policy their chatbot had created in their case, I think many of these companies are thinking twice before allowing an LLM to respond to people out of fear of the words of the chatbot making legal issues for them.
  - 6510 3y ago
    It can serve canned responses np. If there is a need to freestyle it has to properly explain it is a chat bot and that the response isn't legally binding. You can pretty much say anything if you put a question mark behind it?
  - creer 3y ago
    Killing it may have been more of a PR move than anything. Airlines have regularly been caught in incorrect prices listed on their systems. This is not new. Searching for them is basically a sport. They do just fine with a few incorrect prices flowing through the system. Aliexpress has delivery companies, vendors and a complaint system that are total chaos. Which ends in disputes making it into credit card and paypal disputes systems. That probably still works just fine for them. Companies regularly claim that "oops, that employee made a mistake in telling you that" and I suspect most customers let them. So that I expect it's going to be the result: companies will use chatbots, will try to strong arm customers into "correcting chatbot mistakes" and in the end live with a few results against them.

mschuster91 3y ago

> It’s crazy to me how tech companies pretend customer support is not a critical business function. Because at a certain point of size, it isn't. Even at 10k customers you don't care about losing a few dozen out of frustration, it's just normal attrition - much less at the billions of customers that Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft and the other corporate chunguses have. There will always be enough fresh customers. All hail the bottom line, because that is all that matters in a society that doesn't give a damn about externalized costs.

ToucanLoucan 3y ago

Can anyone give me a downside to shutting down every social media website tomorrow? And yes I know that isn't a realistic option, it's just, what do these companies actually provide beyond pissing everyone off, enabling harassment, and surveillance? The only business I can think of that's even more a net negative than social media is perhaps those companies selling car warranties.

vidalee 3y ago
The vast majority of people on social medias aren't there for following politics or corporations, but connecting with friends and communities.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I genuinely think that social media inserting themselves in the connections between friends, family, and community is doing harm to those connections. It would be better if people did that directly with each other rather than through an intermediary.
surgical_fire 3y ago
There are actually many upsides.
- kderbyma 3y ago
  I'll wait.
UncleEntity 3y ago
> Can anyone give me a downside to shutting down every social media website tomorrow? Perhaps the biggest violation of the First Amendment in the history of the US? If that's not "abridging the freedom of speech" I don't know what is...
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  I think it's become abundantly clear that absolute free speech is not an unalloyed good for anyone, especially when confounded by the profit motives of massive corporations.

lotsofpulp 3y ago

Facebook users are not customers. They are the beneficiaries of free computing resources and bandwidth. And they are free to use 2FA to secure their accounts (might even be required). If people mishandle their login credentials, that is not Facebook’s problem. If someone is a victim of a crime, that is the judicial system’s problem.

BizarroLand 3y ago
>Facebook users are not customers. They are the beneficiaries of free computing resources and bandwidth. And they are free to use 2FA to secure their accounts (might even be required). >If people mishandle their login credentials, that is not Facebook’s problem. If someone is a victim of a crime, that is the judicial system’s problem. I'll reference this next time someones asks me to show them an example of something that is both legal and unethical

Ajay-p 3y ago

One of my great fears in life is getting locked out of a Google or Meta account. I have resolved in myself that should that occur the account is forever lost because there is no way to get support. The best that one can hope for is that a media publication takes up their plight and writes about it, or they know someone who is employed by one of those corporations. Even when customers pay for a product, Meta and Google customer service is horrible.

morgango 3y ago
I had similar concerns so I at least moved my email to Fastmail and then set up a google account tied to it instead of Gmail. When you create the google account, you can just choose to use an existing email address (see https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/27441?hl=en#existingemail https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/27441?hl=en#exist...). Also, with fastmail if you use your own domain you can have any email address automatically forwarded to the same box. So, if your gmail account for "me@mydomain.com" gets shut down you can start a new one with "myself@mydomain.com" and you will still have access to all your customer service emails and info that may have been sent in the past. Any other provider should do, but I have liked fastmail a lot. SSO + Gmail at the same provider = risk of permanent loss of access.
ahazred8ta 3y ago
Actually you CAN get real human SLA tech support from google. If you pay $20/yr for https://one.google.com https://one.google.com storage you also get paid support for google account snafus. No joke.

bongoman42 3y ago

In one of the success stories of startups the founder's explicit message was 'Let some fires burn'. The fires were people complaining to customer support. The point was you can move faster if you don't bother about resolving issues for a few pesky customers.