"I want to make another delivery on my friend's birthday, can I help contact the courier?"
"Sorry, not sure what you mean. ”
"Can you help me make a note of 'delivery in two days'?"
"Dear, this question stumped me. ”
"I need a human agent. ”
"The manual customer service is busy, and the intelligent customer service is at your service, how can I help you?"
……
The above conversation took place between Ms. Zou, a citizen of Beijing, and the AI customer service of a store on an e-commerce platform. After repeated conversations with the AI customer service to no avail, Ms. Zou tried to contact the courier through the official phone number and ask him to deliver the goods at the desired time. But what she didn't expect was that the courier call was also replied by AI customer service, and it took a lot of effort to communicate and failed to solve her problem.
"AI customer service is driving people crazy, I can't communicate, I can't understand anything. Ms. Zou said helplessly.
From express delivery companies to online shopping platforms, from banking and finance to tourism, at present, more and more businesses have begun to adopt AI customer service, using intelligent voice and other technologies to serve users, which has achieved service standards and convenience to a certain extent, saving labor costs. At the same time, many users have found that some intelligent customer service is not intelligent and cannot identify problems, especially personalized problems, and some businesses have no manual customer service when they use AI customer service, and AI customer service has become a "roadblock" to solve the problem.
In addition, problems such as AI customer service harassment have also made consumers miserable.
The automatic reply to the non-asked intelligent customer service is not intelligent enough
During this year's "Double Eleven", Guangdong citizen Zhao Shuang (pseudonym) bought a coat in a women's clothing store on an e-commerce platform, and after receiving the goods, he found that the coat was not satisfactory and wanted to return it, but the relevant page could not find the service of returning the shipping package, so he clicked on the store customer service dialog box for help.
Unexpectedly, the reply of the store's AI customer service was completely unanswered: "Dear, I understand your anxious mood, please dissipate your anger and wait patiently", "We will do our best to solve the problem for our relatives", "You are our high-quality customer, we will definitely protect your rights and interests"......
"I just want to ask where is the return package shipping service, why can't I find it?" Zhao Shuang said, the AI customer service's reply logic is chaotic, there is no useful word, and there is no human customer service, "I really want to be angry with them."
It is understood that AI customer service is based on various artificial intelligence technologies, and services are carried out through AI, with diversified service channels and data exchange between various channels, and 24-hour all-weather response.
With the development of artificial intelligence technology, many enterprises have begun to use robots to replace manual customer service in order to save costs and improve efficiency, and AI customer service has come into being. According to the "2023 China Intelligent Customer Service Market Report", the scale of China's intelligent customer service market has reached 6.68 billion yuan in 2022, and it is expected that the market size is expected to grow to 18.13 billion yuan by 2027.
In practice, some AI customer service can quickly and accurately answer consumers' questions and provide convenient and effective solutions. However, some AI customer service seems to be too mechanical, and many of the answers are wrong, making consumers feel dissatisfied and helpless.
Li Yan (pseudonym), a citizen of Beijing, told reporters that she bought a washing machine at a high price on the e-commerce platform some time ago, and asked the customer service "where to pour laundry detergent" after the arrival of the goods? Li Yan asked the model she bought, "Is there a smart delivery function", and the AI customer service replied, "Smart delivery matches the detergent that needs to be added according to the weight of the clothes".
A simple question, the content of the answer is inexplicable. Li Yan complained.
The reporter entered 15 brand flagship stores on multiple e-commerce platforms, and when consulting customer service on product problems, it was found that 13 stores were directly answered by AI customer service. If you ask about some general questions, such as product quality, delivery time, product inventory, etc., AI customer service can mostly give an accurate answer immediately, but if you ask some more personalized questions, AI customer service often answers the wrong questions, and only a few stores will automatically switch to manual service.
For example, when communicating with the flagship store of a down jacket brand, the AI customer service gave accurate answers to some specific keywords, such as "size", "delivery time" and "filling amount", but when the reporter asked about the details such as "the difference between the filling amount and the down content" and "what kind of national standard does the fabric belong to", the AI customer service's answer was incorrect.
In addition to "passively" replying to consumer inquiries in the dialog box, the "proactive" approach of many AI customer service is unbearable.
The phone rang, an unfamiliar number. Worried that it was a courier or other important information, Ms. Sun, a citizen of Beijing, hurriedly connected, and a subdued voice immediately came from the opposite side: "Hello, this is the ×× flagship store, this call is to tell you......" Ms. Sun hung up the phone angrily: "The harassing call of AI customer service is here again!"
"AI harassing phone calls are much more annoying than harassing text messages, text messages can be ignored, and the phone always has to be picked up and listened to" "Sometimes I am busy, and suddenly a phone call comes and I find that it is an AI" "It sounds like a real person's voice, but it can't communicate normally on the phone, it's a harassing call"...... On social platforms, netizens with similar feelings have "complained".
When it comes to the problem of unintelligent customer service, Mr. Ma, who works as an AI engineer in Beijing, believes that the computing power of large language models used by enterprises is different, and the choices for AI to feed documents are also different, which is what leads to the uneven recognition ability of AI. Problems such as insufficient AI technology, scattered data, and low completeness of knowledge graph are the fundamental crux of the "insufficient intelligence" of intelligent customer service.
A large number of manual customer service is missing, increasing the cost of user communication
The reporter saw on a third-party complaint platform that a large number of consumers are reporting the problems of AI customer service, such as "customer service is AI, and it does not solve the problem at all", "intelligent customer service is not intelligent, there is no manual processing channel, and the problem cannot be solved", "harassment by changing numbers every day, all are AI customer service", etc.
Behind the use of AI customer service in all walks of life, there is a large lack of human customer service - users encounter problems and want to take the initiative to seek customer service help, whether through online platforms or phone calls, AI customer service "blocks" in front. In the process of communication, the AI customer service either lists a series of useless answers, or slowly starts the voice broadcast, which is like "chickens and ducks talking", which makes many consumers distressed.
Liu Shuai (pseudonym), a citizen of Beijing, said that he had a question on a social platform and wanted to consult customer service, first talked to online customer service, and after sending questions, AI customer service replied with 14 pieces of content, "There are various related content answers about members, account abnormalities, lottery and so on, but none of them can solve my problem, and the manual customer service cannot be contacted at all."
Liu Shuai had no choice but to call the customer service again, but the AI customer service answered, and the same 14 content voice broadcasts back and forth "nesting dolls". He proposed to "transfer to manual customer service", but was told that "the current agent is busy, and you can make an appointment for a return visit time for manual customer service online". "As soon as I saw that the manual appointment for the return visit was scheduled until the afternoon of the next day, I had to give up the consultation. Liu Shuai said that wasting half an hour back and forth failed to solve the problem.
Ms. Li, a citizen of Tianjin, consulted the courier service hotline because the express was stopped in the field for a week and was not delivered, and the whole process was connected by AI customer service. She explained her intentions, and the AI customer service asked her to enter the courier number, and then said that "the courier is being delivered", and it was repeated several times. "AI customer service can't solve my problem at all, but the official hotline doesn't have the option of manual service, so I can only keep repeating that I want to take human service, and I repeated it dozens of times before switching to human service. ”
A similar experience has been experienced by Mr. Zhang, a citizen of Tianjin. Not long ago, he was looking for customer service for banking business, and he was not satisfied with the reply of AI customer service, so he proposed to switch to manual service, and the reply he got was: "The current customer service is busy, and it has entered the consultation queue, and it is currently ranked 70th......"
"I just want to find a human service to solve the problem, why is it so difficult?!" Mr. Zhang sighed.
On the complaint platform of an e-commerce company, there are nearly 20,000 complaints about the problem of "no human customer service can be found". Many netizens complained that whether it is entering manual customer service, manual service or transferring to manual, there is always only one sentence: dear, please describe your problem in detail.
Some netizens said that they called 45 customer service numbers on the market, including communication service providers, e-commerce platforms, logistics companies, etc., and the statistical time showed that it took an average of 94 seconds to transfer to manual customer service, and the longest wait was as long as 380 seconds.
Recently, the reporter called the customer service number of 21 e-commerce platforms, communication service providers, and logistics companies on the market, and 8 of them could not be transferred to manual customer service, and the rest took an average of 69 seconds to transfer to manual customer service, and the longest waiting time was as long as 316 seconds.
Chen Yinjiang, deputy secretary-general of the Consumer Rights Protection Law Research Association of the China Law Society, believes that companies cannot only consider their own costs and efficiency, but ignore consumers' time. When consumers look for customer service, they generally encounter a problem and want to solve it. However, some enterprises do not set up manual customer service at all, and use intelligent customer service as a "shield", which is completely useless and cannot play a role in solving problems. "Although it is difficult to define how much damage will be caused to consumers, at least it will bring a bad consumer experience. For operators, reducing their own operating costs sometimes increases the cost of communication with consumers. ”
Standardize standards, strengthen supervision, and prevent enterprises from evading their responsibilities
According to the "Customer Service Convenience Consumption Survey Report in the Context of Digitalization" released by the Jiangsu Provincial Consumer Protection Commission, 71.2% of consumers said that intelligent robots "answer questions that are not asked" and "answer questions intelligently", and 23.6% of consumers said that they could not find human customer service, or that manual customer service "kicked the ball".
According to public data, in the 2022 survey of mainland users who believe that the existing shortcomings of intelligent customer service are located, 51.4% of consumers said that they could not solve personalized problems except for fixed words, 47.9% of consumers said that they could not accurately understand the questions raised and answered the questions that were not asked, and 34.2% of consumers said that the problem solving efficiency was low.
According to an IT technician at an information technology company in Shanghai, many companies choose to use AI customer service based on current management needs or want to optimize services. Compared with human customer service, AI customer service is less expensive, can be online 24 hours a day, and has a faster response speed, which can basically answer most of consumers' questions.
When talking about the reasons for such a large-scale use of AI customer service, many e-commerce companies said that they were also forced by the situation. Wang Ping, who runs a daily necessities store on an e-commerce platform, told reporters that the original intention of using AI customer service was "simply to save labor costs", and the initial ratio of AI customer service and manual customer service was basically 1:1, "but with the increase in the frequency of consumer purchases and the frequency of platform promotions, the number of orders has increased significantly, and there are customer inquiries and orders on average every minute on the day of 'Double Eleven', and it is not realistic to replace it with manual customer service." Based on this situation, many e-commerce companies have to use AI customer service on a large scale."
An industry insider who works as a customer service on an e-commerce platform told reporters: "Everyone actually knows that AI services are not easy to use, but e-commerce platforms have a requirement of a 3-minute response rate, and they will be included in the assessment criteria." In desperation, e-commerce uses a large number of AI customer service, and human customer service collaborates. When the AI customer service answers incorrectly, the human customer service will intervene and withdraw the reply. However, some companies have set up a 'quality inspection team', and if there are many withdrawals, it may be misjudged that there are inappropriate remarks in the customer service. ”
It is understandable for enterprises to introduce AI customer service for labor cost considerations, but the massive use of AI customer service makes it difficult to find human customer service, does it infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of consumers?
He Zi'an, a lawyer at Shanghai Central Law (Hangzhou) Law Firm, said that the heavy use of AI customer service may indeed prevent consumers from directly contacting human customer service, but this in itself does not directly constitute an infringement of consumer rights. If the AI customer service cannot effectively solve the problem, resulting in the damage to the rights and interests of consumers, such as the inability to deal with returns, refunds and other issues in a timely manner, it may involve infringement of consumer rights and interests. In such cases, the consumer may lodge a complaint with the Consumer Association or, as the case may be, with the relevant supervisory authority.
"Merchants use AI customer service to call consumers to promote product promotions and other information, which is suspected of infringing on citizens' personal information. If the received phone call contains sensitive personal information or the call is made without the user's explicit consent, it may be in violation of data protection and privacy protection laws. He Zi'an said.
Li Daqiao, a lawyer at Hunan Jiangrong Law Firm, mentioned that AI as a program does not have the ability to bear relevant legal responsibilities, "it can only be said that the subject behind AI may infringe." Enterprises embracing AI technology cannot be done once and for all, and they cannot only consider cost and efficiency while ignoring the actual needs and feelings of consumers.
"AI customer service will not and cannot completely replace human customer service. In Li Daqiao's view, AI customer service is still an immature business sector, and enterprises should reasonably allocate the proportion of AI customer service and human customer service on the basis of considering business reputation and service quality. For some routine consultation questions, intelligent replies can be made, while for some consumer complaints and other issues that need to be solved urgently, especially those involving the personal and property safety of consumers, they should be resolved through manual customer service channels first.
At the same time, some people in the industry believe that the relevant departments should strengthen the supervision of AI customer service by formulating relevant management norms and standards in response to the phenomenon of AI customer service in enterprises, so as to prevent enterprises from using AI customer service to evade responsibilities and obligations.
Editor: Chen Ruizhi
Source: Rule of Law Daily