I appreciate the insight and honesty of this experience. My wife and I share a motto when it comes to our interactions; "Everyone has a story, and it's worth hearing." I, like you, have made the mistake of drowning their story out with my impatience.
I work with AI all of the time. Perplexity/ChatGPT/Gemini. Probably purchasing a Claude subscription here soon and I do local AI too. Only point of this is to say that I do exactly the same thing as you. AI is a tool and a fantastic one. I don't "talk" to it unless I want to use it for quizzing or interactive learning on a topic like for example with notebookllm. My settings are the same as yours. What I will say in your defense is that the one area of business most likely to be AI is customer service. The time will come if it is not already here when the default expectation will be that you are dealing with AI if dealing with customer service. An in person encounter with customer service will be the abormal case.
Customer service is already dealing with cases that can't be dealt with by AI. The job is much more stressful as a result. Nothing easy to solve anymore. The simple, more pleasant stuff, was taken away (mostly), leaving us with disgruntled and frustrated callers who have went through every possible scenario before speaking to us and they want to talk to a live human to help them.
That makes sense. Not a pleasant job as a result. I can tell you as a technologist though that many of the edge cases that make it through to an actual person today in the future will not. The issue today is that most companies don't have a tech stack that works well with AI. The User interfaces needed by people and the processes behind them are impediments for AI interfaces. It is going to take a lot more time for this to happen (years). I'm not talking about the kind of customer service AT&T provide where they deliberately make it difficult for you to talk to a person. If you are one of these top tier cs people, I empathize.
I am a licensed insurance agent dealing with many insurance company products in Canada, little in the U.S. I sell insurance policies and deal with out of TAT claims, claims with missing info, and billing issues (double billing, missed payments). Updating billing information is not currently offered by one of the insurance companies I provide assistance for. I can assure you that many people would just prefer to update their info online, but for security reasons, policyholders must call to update. The line is secured making the transaction safer than updating over the net where the caller may not be using a secure VPN to update their info leaving their sensitive banking info vulnerable.
I find it interesting that anyone is talking about security online in this case and requiring a phone call. This is outdated. There must be reasons outside of security. TLS 1.2 and https secure socket protocol by default are standard protocols for literally everyone online now. Anyone dealing with a bank directly online must be protected by this as would be insurance companies. Perhaps the insurance industry is just behind or there is some other reason. Many VPN services are not reputable unless the VPNs is provided by the corporation you are connected to which is typically only for employees of the company.
To be clear, not disputing why you do it or that this is not the case. I just find it bizarre.
Maybe try my ChatGPT strategy: I've programmed it to be "warm and friendly, but not sycophantic. Don't tell me I'm a genius when my head is up my ass." Seems to work.
Personally, I kind of enjoy using (mostly) normal speech with ChatGPT. It's amusing to do that with a machine, and when using voice mode I've set a lovely British female voice. But when I'm done brainstorming with it, I paste the entire conversation into Perplexity for a reality check, which almost always turns up incomplete data or straight-up errors, with source links to back it up. If ChatGPT is like your buddy helping you sketch ideas on a cocktail napkin, then Perplexity is the subject matter expert who looks at your napkin, clears his throat and heads for the whiteboard.
As to customer service people, we should always try and remember that they're poorly paid people in crappy jobs talking to angry customers all day long in order to keep roofs over their heads.
So stoked you have to talk to people like that, but it’s in the tone.
If I were Italy, I would bar the ICE contingent. Their specialty seems to be harassing citizens, not protecting people. I also hope the American athletes are housed away from the other countries.
Great newsy, newsletter today Bill. As one who loathes all the stupid, useless auto things one can encounter these days, I try very hard not to have to deal with them personally because I have no patience with this kind of “customer service”. I’m lucky at this late stage in my life to have a son who is himself a customer service rep and who has the patience of Job to deal with the auto encounters. I know too that he uses CHAT GPT in some of his projects so I’ll be sending this on to him as it may prove helpful.
Working as a licensed insurance agent, I spend a large part of my workday speaking to policyholders across Canada and occasionally the U.S. When people remain kind and patient, it is so much easier to try to help them. I always try to remain kind and patient with my callers and avoid most escalations by remaining pleasant and calm. Besides, escalations aren’t usually helpful as what I say will basically be repeated by a senior agent with a wait time to get that escalation callback. Keep that in mind when asking to speak to a supervisor when calling customer service. You’re dealing with a human with feelings, not with AI. Reading today’s Understandably newsletter made me want to write this.
Sometimes I would welcome the opportunity to just pay to speak with a person. It would often be worth it. The older I get the more wasting time becomes a greater frustration. Having to spend 30 minutes with AI just to get to a person is a major time suck.
I appreciate the insight and honesty of this experience. My wife and I share a motto when it comes to our interactions; "Everyone has a story, and it's worth hearing." I, like you, have made the mistake of drowning their story out with my impatience.
I work with AI all of the time. Perplexity/ChatGPT/Gemini. Probably purchasing a Claude subscription here soon and I do local AI too. Only point of this is to say that I do exactly the same thing as you. AI is a tool and a fantastic one. I don't "talk" to it unless I want to use it for quizzing or interactive learning on a topic like for example with notebookllm. My settings are the same as yours. What I will say in your defense is that the one area of business most likely to be AI is customer service. The time will come if it is not already here when the default expectation will be that you are dealing with AI if dealing with customer service. An in person encounter with customer service will be the abormal case.
Customer service is already dealing with cases that can't be dealt with by AI. The job is much more stressful as a result. Nothing easy to solve anymore. The simple, more pleasant stuff, was taken away (mostly), leaving us with disgruntled and frustrated callers who have went through every possible scenario before speaking to us and they want to talk to a live human to help them.
That makes sense. Not a pleasant job as a result. I can tell you as a technologist though that many of the edge cases that make it through to an actual person today in the future will not. The issue today is that most companies don't have a tech stack that works well with AI. The User interfaces needed by people and the processes behind them are impediments for AI interfaces. It is going to take a lot more time for this to happen (years). I'm not talking about the kind of customer service AT&T provide where they deliberately make it difficult for you to talk to a person. If you are one of these top tier cs people, I empathize.
I am a licensed insurance agent dealing with many insurance company products in Canada, little in the U.S. I sell insurance policies and deal with out of TAT claims, claims with missing info, and billing issues (double billing, missed payments). Updating billing information is not currently offered by one of the insurance companies I provide assistance for. I can assure you that many people would just prefer to update their info online, but for security reasons, policyholders must call to update. The line is secured making the transaction safer than updating over the net where the caller may not be using a secure VPN to update their info leaving their sensitive banking info vulnerable.
I find it interesting that anyone is talking about security online in this case and requiring a phone call. This is outdated. There must be reasons outside of security. TLS 1.2 and https secure socket protocol by default are standard protocols for literally everyone online now. Anyone dealing with a bank directly online must be protected by this as would be insurance companies. Perhaps the insurance industry is just behind or there is some other reason. Many VPN services are not reputable unless the VPNs is provided by the corporation you are connected to which is typically only for employees of the company.
To be clear, not disputing why you do it or that this is not the case. I just find it bizarre.
I also find it bizarre, but I don’t make the rules.
Maybe try my ChatGPT strategy: I've programmed it to be "warm and friendly, but not sycophantic. Don't tell me I'm a genius when my head is up my ass." Seems to work.
Personally, I kind of enjoy using (mostly) normal speech with ChatGPT. It's amusing to do that with a machine, and when using voice mode I've set a lovely British female voice. But when I'm done brainstorming with it, I paste the entire conversation into Perplexity for a reality check, which almost always turns up incomplete data or straight-up errors, with source links to back it up. If ChatGPT is like your buddy helping you sketch ideas on a cocktail napkin, then Perplexity is the subject matter expert who looks at your napkin, clears his throat and heads for the whiteboard.
As to customer service people, we should always try and remember that they're poorly paid people in crappy jobs talking to angry customers all day long in order to keep roofs over their heads.
Thanks for the tip about Perplexity. I'm going to give it a try!
Don't tell me I'm a genius when my head is up my ass. 🎯 *chef's kiss"
Heck, just about every text(chat) interaction with customer service is AI now as far as I can tell.
And.
What could possibly go wrong? Poorly trained ICE agents involved in the Olympics. I can only hope they don’t give them any kind of weapons.
So stoked you have to talk to people like that, but it’s in the tone.
If I were Italy, I would bar the ICE contingent. Their specialty seems to be harassing citizens, not protecting people. I also hope the American athletes are housed away from the other countries.
Great newsy, newsletter today Bill. As one who loathes all the stupid, useless auto things one can encounter these days, I try very hard not to have to deal with them personally because I have no patience with this kind of “customer service”. I’m lucky at this late stage in my life to have a son who is himself a customer service rep and who has the patience of Job to deal with the auto encounters. I know too that he uses CHAT GPT in some of his projects so I’ll be sending this on to him as it may prove helpful.
Working as a licensed insurance agent, I spend a large part of my workday speaking to policyholders across Canada and occasionally the U.S. When people remain kind and patient, it is so much easier to try to help them. I always try to remain kind and patient with my callers and avoid most escalations by remaining pleasant and calm. Besides, escalations aren’t usually helpful as what I say will basically be repeated by a senior agent with a wait time to get that escalation callback. Keep that in mind when asking to speak to a supervisor when calling customer service. You’re dealing with a human with feelings, not with AI. Reading today’s Understandably newsletter made me want to write this.
Sometimes I would welcome the opportunity to just pay to speak with a person. It would often be worth it. The older I get the more wasting time becomes a greater frustration. Having to spend 30 minutes with AI just to get to a person is a major time suck.
Appreciate this, Bill, and in case you want to round out your thought process...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/24/technology/chatgpt-alexa-please-thank-you.html