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Re:PayPal “Buy Now” buttons have been broken for a week by goda90 on Thursday June 29, 2023 @12:43AM (#36516369)
I was trying to change my policy with Geico today. The web browser "virtual assistant" told me I had to go to another page and gave me the link, but then the assistant and its button disappeared when I navigated away. I switched to the mobile app to try again. The available answers eventually got me to an agent who helped me, but part way through I left WiFi range and was disconnected. Trying to get on again I manually asked to skip to the agent and the virtual assistant got confused. So I clicked on one of the available answers and it got confused by its own answers. By chance I got back to the same agent, but it was definitely clunky.
Re:PayPal “Buy Now” buttons have been broken for a week by donalhunt on Thursday June 29, 2023 @02:39AM (#36517155)
Reality: they only have 1 agent.

There has been a major shift to using chat bots and knowledge bases to reduce the demand on human agents. This allows companies to reduce staffing costs considerably. Less staff, less management.

Unfortunately, there seems to be minimal investment in analysing the user experience over time. Few companies update their bot when there are known issues impacting their service (like they would for phone IVRs).

Re:PayPal “Buy Now” buttons have been broken for a week by a_bonobo on Thursday June 29, 2023 @09:14AM (#36519924)
I heard a talk about 2 weeks ago from a law person who mentioned that of all the money ChatGPT is making for companies, the number one driver is savings due from customer support. ChatGPT is not pushing is towards AGI, it's only pushing Doctorow's enshittification.
Re:PayPal “Buy Now” buttons have been broken for a week by jzombie on Thursday June 29, 2023 @03:37PM (#36525640)
As an AI language model, I don't have real-time information on specific events or talks that have taken place after my knowledge cutoff in September 2021. However, I can provide some general insights based on the information available up until that time.