AI Helps Indian Ecommerce Firm Cut Customer Call Costs By 75% (techcrunch.com)
- Reference: 0175545389
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/24/11/26/131222/ai-helps-indian-ecommerce-firm-cut-customer-call-costs-by-75
- Source link: https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/26/ai-helps-indias-meesho-cut-customer-call-costs-by-75/
> Softbank-backed online shopping site Meesho has rolled out what it claims is the first GenAI-powered voice bot among Indian e-commerce firms for customer support, [1]paring down some expenses by 75% . Meesho has more than 160 million customers in India, with 80% of them in smaller cities, towns and villages.
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> [...] The Bengaluru-based e-commerce startup said Tuesday its AI bot currently handles 60,000 customer calls daily in English and Hindi. The startup, which also counts Elevation and Prosus among its backers, plans to add support for six more Indian languages.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/26/ai-helps-indias-meesho-cut-customer-call-costs-by-75/
Breakdown (Score:4, Insightful)
Cutting labor costs by 90% and increasing compute costs by 4000%
Re: (Score:2)
> Cutting labor costs by 90% and increasing compute costs by 4000%
GenAI is expensive to train but not to run.
We are not ready for this. (Score:3)
That's 75% savings is hands down a 75% reduction in staff. Let's say they're lying and it's only 1/3 that, you are still talking about a 25% across the board reduction in staff and therefore jobs.
We are still very much a "if you don't work you don't eat" culture. The idea of running out of work is not something we're ready for but we are very quickly approaching it.
Go on YouTube. Look up some videos about how stuff's made. Anything just take your pick. Look at all that automation. That's 40 years of non-stop automation and yes it has had an impact. Do a bit of googling and you will find a study showing that 70% of the middle class jobs in this country were taken by robots instead of outsourcing or illegals.
We've been covering that up for years using cheap goods imported from China because they had borderline slave labor and they could care less about pouring carcinogenic chemicals into their water supply. Scientific advancements in food production helped too. But there's only so much that I can do especially with all the market consolidation going on.
We are entering into a Star Trek style Utopia phase when it comes to work but we still have all the baggage left over from thousands of years of extreme shortages and the need for everyone to be constantly working. Ironically Star Trek saw this coming years ago, Google "The Bell Riots". Only that's a science fiction show, when actual riots happen the people in charge just plain don't care.
On the plus side maybe we here on slashdot will all be dead and we can just leave this mess to our kids.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Predictably, rsilvergun charges in with a hot take about how evil automobiles and electric streetlights are because they put most farriers and lamplighters out of work.
Now show the numbers... (Score:2, Informative)
Of how many customers it actually "Helped" vs those too frustrated to continue the call that "Hung up" without getting any service... ;-)
I have a cheaper solution (Score:2)
A phone system that hangs up on everyone would cost even less.
Re: (Score:2)
> A phone system that hangs up on everyone would cost even less.
Phone tech support performance is measured by average call length. Shorter the better. So to game the numbers, the tech support drone just hangs up on every third or fourth call. If you've ever wondered why you sit on hold for a half hour and then get hung up on, that's why. Bad managers.
I worked dial-up internet tech support for a summer. Worst job I've ever had. AI can have it.
It's possible to imagine... (Score:2)
...a future AI that provides perfect tech support. It would have access to a library of all technical documentation, the bug database and all service history and would give the best answers possible.
Unfortunately, today's AI will spew nonsense scripts while hallucinating
The tsunami of crap continues
Re: (Score:2)
> ...a future AI that provides perfect tech support. It would have access to a library of all technical documentation, the bug database and all service history and would give the best answers possible.
> Unfortunately, today's AI will spew nonsense scripts while hallucinating
> The tsunami of crap continues
Considering that most support now is humans spewing nonsense scripts no matter what the person on the other end is saying? I understand why companies would be scrambling to replace the humans with AI. There's no point in having a human involved if decision making and troubleshooting are no longer a goal. And based on most support calls I've been stuck on? Neither rank as a viable path. It's, "Read the script. No matter what." If you're lucky, you dead-end them and they need to escalate. It'll be the same wi
Cutting costs by losing customers? (Score:2)
You're infuriating your customers with AI chatbots. They're useless. Is your hope that people will get frustrated, not ask for help, leave a shitty review, and never do business with your company again?...well, that's "one way" to save costs.
I know some companies operate cynically like that. However, it's gross and has made me avoid certain companies. We all hate dealing with AI chatbots. How about instead of investing all this money in killing jobs for customer support, you use this AI to write bet
Suck 4 Less (Score:2)
If it's as sucky as most customer support, then all it did is allow the company to suck for less. There's "move fast and break things", and now "suck for less".
Re: Suck 4 Less (Score:2)
All those years of Six Sigma are over, because they found 3-Stars mediocrity is still profitable.