A few months ago, my fiancé and I shed a pair ebikes. We live in very hilly Atlanta, which is a very hilly city, and we’ll both get bonuses at work, making about $2,000 per bike feel, for a while, easier to digest.
We ordered online, and a few days later, my fiance’s beautiful bike with lots of features arrived at our door. Mine, purchased separately from a different vendor, was late, then late again, and again.
Finally, one Wednesday evening, I got a message from FedEx confirming that my bike had been delivered to our address and signed for. This seemed unlikely, given that when the text arrived, I was standing in my kitchen, bike-less, air-frying a batch of chicken thighs.
I looked outside our house; my package was missing. So, I checked my order confirmation, only to find that the bike had been signed for by someone with the mysterious letters “MM,” which don’t match mine, my fiancé, or anyone in our building. If it was stolen, lost, or delivered to the wrong address it doesn’t matter as much as finding a solution. I decided to do it the next day by calling FedEx customer service line for help.
What followed was a months-long descent into the bowels of customer service hell, during which I spent countless hours on the Internet, chatbot-dominated waiting rooms—including FedEx, the bike company, my bank, my credit card company, and even my local police department—desperately trying to find a real, live person who would talk to me, let alone solve my $2,000 problem.
New “Sludge”.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about my condition is how normal it has become. In recent years, organizations have employed artificial intelligence and some skills in their customer service hands, often at the expense of human staff.
In a survey of customer service leaders published in April, 31 percent said they have already reduced or are planning to reduce their population due to the adoption of AI. Most of the leaders surveyed say they are moving their agents into new roles or adding new tasks to their workloads rather than simply firing them.
However, some leaders have been more rude. Verizon CEO Dan Schulman he recently told Bloomberg that AI could replace a “significant percentage” of the company’s customer service work, noting that it is one of the business sectors most affected by the changes brought about by technology.
For users like me, this has resulted in a less human, more extreme version of the frustrating wait times, intermittent music with no answers, and non-responsiveness that have characterized poor customer service for decades. Furthermore, these systems are sometimes employed deliberately, through an industry technique known as “dirt,” in an attempt to discourage customers looking for solutions.
As Ryan Hamilton, a marketing professor and consumer psychology researcher at Emory University, points out, AI has given a new face to convenience.
“Sludge existed before AI,” Hamilton says. “But AI, as with everything else, has only increased its dystopian nature.”
Whether it’s due to poor user experience, intentional obfuscation, or a combination of both, it’s clear that shoppers are unhappy with the AI-driven customer service landscape. In a report published in May and involving consumers from the US, UK and Canada, 59 percent said frustration with AI customer service agents. Meanwhile, 85 percent said they would prefer to speak to a real person.
My Personal Chatbot Hell
When my ebike went missing, almost every call led me to chat, with FedEx’s AI agents often ignoring my requests to speak to a human representative.
Even my local police department made the problem worse. When I called them to file a lost property report, I was prompted to leave my details on the chatbot and wait for an officer to contact me.
