Inteligência Artificial ou Burrice Natural?

There's nothing more annoying for a Brazilian than having to talk to customer service. I remember well the first campaign about Rhodia's first customer service center in the late 1970s. A tied-up and gagged woman was released and allowed to talk on the phone. Thus began the so-called customer service in Brazil.

Why so-called? Because customer service today is more about customer service than customer service. Companies seem to have forgotten the purpose of services and, to comply with legislation, have hired a bunch of unprepared people to fool that miserable person who pays the bills. It seems absurd when put like that, right? And it is.

This problem is old, but it seems to be getting worse: the use of bots, automated systems, and AI has only served to remove the little humanity that existed in these services. In this disservice, the customer is the annoying one on duty, and the agent's job is to use a good excuse to get rid of them. Anything goes to convince the customer that it's their fault.

What's the logic behind this process? Why did the addition of tools make an already bad situation worse? There was a time when the reason was outsourcing the service. What about today? I believe we're living in a time similar to the emergence of CRM in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Back then, the promise was that CRM would automate the customer service process in the same way that ERP automated internal processes.

Wonderful mistake. What companies discovered the hard way was that they didn't understand how relationships were built, much less that the history of those relationships was in the minds of some employees. A good example was banks: there was no software to replace an account manager, not because the manager was essential, but because the customer's history and potential weren't recorded anywhere other than in the manager's memory. Therefore, it wasn't possible to standardize relationship processes in the same way that had been done with operations. Issuing an invoice is very different from understanding the customer's mind.

What's happening now is simple: the rush to reduce staff (better known as expenses) has led to a hasty attempt at automation. Just scroll through Instagram and you'll see the number of supposed experts selling automations worth fortunes. The problem is that all these supposed automations lack the same thing I mentioned above with CRM: understanding the business model. What consumers are experiencing is a bunch of WhatsApp messages full of emojis and cute terms that don't solve their problem.

Try calling your insurance company, complaining about a utility bill, or requesting a health insurance reimbursement, and you'll understand what I mean. Companies are doing exactly the same thing as the government: those who pay the bill become a burden, as if they exist for themselves.

Don't believe all this talk about miraculous automation or that the customer service process can be replaced by AI without loss. Either you know your customer very well, or you'll get to know them when they go to the competition.

In time, AI is as good at understanding the subtleties of relationships as the image above. I asked the AI to create an image of a frustrated customer experiencing poor WhatsApp service. It had to do this explicitly. :))