Posted on 07/15/2016 6:09:11 PM PDT by EveningStar
THE END OF ROBOTS, MORE OR LESS:
I have been thinking a lot about this lately. Everywhere I go service is utterly horrible, even with companies once known for service.
1) people don't listen. No matter how clearly you state an order, explain your need, people don't listen. I'm not just talking about fast-food---it's everywhere. I spent hours with a saleswoman for a new home we were building. I stated again and again, "We have plenty of money for a down payment, but my monthly payment CANNOT be more than $X". Again and again she would mindlessly print out a document only to have the final number be $X+ something. I said, "You aren't LISTENING. I can put down as much as needed, but the monthly number must be $X." After several attempts, she finally got it.
Now, some of this is the attention span issue. But another big part is the computerization of everything. People who take your order are so anxious to get to their next stock question they don't even let you finish ordering because they are tapping on their screens.
2) The roboticization of products is getting to the point that once anything breaks, you cannot fix it. Our tv system in our house is fully prompted ("Watch a DVD," "Watch DirectTV") but if anything happens, you can't even turn the TV on---or if you can, you need to keep 4 separate remotes, fully programmed and up on batteries---for every single device.) Cars are getting to where you can't drive without the seat belt bell driving you nuts. I'm not stupid, but when I rent an unfamiliar car, it takes me 20 minutes sitting in the lot just to figure out how to change radio stations, turn on the air, etc.
3) Devices supposedly for our "safety" are now utter nuisances. Who has had a smoke detector start chirping, but it's so high in a vaulted ceiling you need a hook-and-ladder truck to reach it? I'm having all mine ripped out and replaced with the (expensive) 10 year devices so that I just don't ever have to change them. Hotels have heat and air pre-set so you can't cool a room.
4) Need a product replaced? Good luck. My wife bought Sur la Table plates. These are not cheap. She needed 10. ALL TEN arrived broken or chipped. She reported it. "Oh, that's ok, we'll send you new ones." She said, "Wait! You MUST pack them differently. Only paper separated them." No one listened. Next set of TEN arrived, all broken. Once again they replaced. This time she got four. On and on til eventually, after four orders and probably 40 total plates, she got 10 not broken. What did this cost the company? If they did this 100 times, the costs would be massive.
Or consider this: we bought a sofa set at Ashley Furniture---not a high end store, but decent stuff and good prices. There was a "throw" on the sofa, so my wife said, "Can we just take the throw with us and then you won't have to deliver it?" Salesman said "fine." He marked it on the sheet.
When the sofa was delivered, there is another throw. My wife said, "We already got this." The guy looked at his (uncorrected) sheet and said, "No, you got a throw coming." We (stupidly and honestly) insisted he take it back. Two weeks later we went to buy another large dining room piece3, but this time our Ashley credit card was tapped out---because instead of just deducting the throw, the wizards at Ashley placed a whole NEW order on the system (charged to our card) then deleted the previous one . . . but the previous one didn't come off the card yet!
What's my point in regaling you with all these stories? It is that I think a human revolution is brewing. We see it in politics, we see it in the economy, we see it everywhere. I think soon we will see a massive resistance to a great deal of automation/roboticization and a return en masse to human made goods, QUALITY human service, the removal of computer "answering systems", etc. (Just try having a problem with your credit card and not knowing a pin number.)
I'm not sure exactly when we'll see this, or where it will show up first, but the times, they are a changin'.
ping
Your problem appears to be people acting as though robots, and not robots themselves.
No “Right to Work” for robots!
It's not just the machines, it's people acting like machines, which are even worse.
My company has recently got religion on this: customer experience is a big focus.
Thanks for posting. Good vanity!
I call this epoch in human history the “Junk era”.
Everything we are surrounded by is just junk. The economy simply doesn’t work in a way where people are rewarded by taking time and really doing their jobs. There is a clearer reward in just phoning it in and doing the least possible.
Look at our buildings and compare them to buildings built pre-60s.
The quality of work of everyone is tanking. We are barely able to clearly define “durable goods”. It’s all just junk.
Why?
Most people never learned how to listen to another person. Too wrapped up in their own little world's concerns.
In Frank Herbert’s “Dune universe” one of the major events of the past, which sets a great many things in motion, was the “Butlerian Jihad” which resulted in the diktat: “Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.”
The current glide path seems likely to make human labor largely unnecessary. The population of Baltimore or Chicago gives us some insight as to what human society looks like when no one wants or needs your labor.
I’d like society to get back to basics and maybe not try so hard to be “rich”. But I suspect that most people want to stomp on the current accelerator. Sigh.
Its just zero tolerance thinking expanded into other areas than schools. No common sense allowed, only questions the computer spits out.
I notice something similar, the incessant need to make things better, when actually they take something that works great, and end up ruining it.
Particularly with electronic devices, and often by taking away useful features, or by just making it different, not better, for no good reason.
I really don’t want to take a continuing education class every time Dish TV comes out with a “better receiver”
Clearly it’s just to repackage the same thing, but it’s as if the designers and programmers don’t even understand how people use the the quipment, or else they are just not thinking things through.
I work for a new company since January.
The entire department was let go last year.
The people we provide services for are so grateful to have their problems answered and solved immediately it is incredible,
We are all amazed that the people in the past were a bunch of do-nothing drama queens whose daily activities consisted of forming ‘alliances’ to vote a different one off the island. We (on my team) are all amazed at how much credit we are getting for JUST DOING OUR JOB...
They are not. The sheer joy that you get when you manage to talk to an actual person makes and keeps customers.
If I had a dime for every time I have heard someone roar in to their phone, "Operator! Customer Service! HUMAN!" after trying to deal with a system that does not fit the problem they are trying to resolve I could take an O-bummer style vacation.
Have two options at the front, "Do you want to place an automated or would you like to speak to our customer service?"
It would keep you CS people from only getting customers who are already frustrated and ready to blow.
True, and even more, as companies discovered they could automate things they decided it was OK to lower the standard of quality as well, since the savings were so huge. So if the automated phone tree or DVD you’re told to watch covers 90% of customers, they decided that was OK because they saved a fortune by not having to cater to the needs of that last 10%.
There already is resistance and a return to old ways. We each vote with our wallets, and if want to speed it up, we know what to do.
Those people you deal with are just acting as interfaces to the robots.
They don’t know what they’re doing anyway, and even if they know they are not authorized to go outside the system-defined process. You’re not getting away from the robot, you’re just having someone press the buttons on your behalf.
I’ll probably get flamed, but what the heck. These problems are indicative of why the Chinese are successful at making and selling goods, and why Americans can not. Bad service, workers who just don’t care to improve service or to offer same. Other countries (usually the well known Asian ones like Japan, Korea and China) excel at offering service. Americans, not so much. It’s a culture thing; diversity is killing us.
I don’t know which is worse—the party lines of the 1950s in which several households shared a single phone line or voicemail of the 2010s.
I disagree. Examples of poor human service in no way heralds the end of robotics and especially AI.
AI will kill us all, probably in our lifetimes.
I need a job.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.