At one call center in the Philippines, workers help Americans with diabetes or neurological conditions troubleshoot devices that monitor their health. Sometimes they get pressing calls: elderly patients who are alone and experiencing a medical emergency.
They literally tried this last time and called it “AI.” They used Siri clones to replace receptionists but they sucked and that’s why call centers became the norm.
This won’t go well.
Its either this or people in India. Once one company does it the price of that good falls and the CPI prints more money entrenching the shrinkflation.
So, the Klarna pattern?
Soon we will reach peak enshitification
I recently had a good experience with one of these where I was able to schedule an appointment for a contractor. They actually repeated my info back to me to make sure it was correct and I understood it.
So many times receptionists are either hard to understand or make a fuck up on some simple task.
In the food industry we switched from a dedicated employee on phones to call center with doordash if we agreed to also test Ai call takers too when they roll that out.
