Customer service cannot be automated using AI

An observation through experience

I’ve been in service business since a while. Throughout my career, I have had many jobs, most of them service based. Be it a cleaner, security officer, IT support officer, Business Owner, or a team leader. One thing I have always enjoyed is providing good customer service to people that I interact with.

With the AI hype and the layoffs of customer service teams across the board, it was obvious, it would replace humans in this sector. But why didn’t it?

Let’s explore.

The Promise

Automated systems trying to replace human’s isn’t new. I am sure there were systems that people put in place to automate daily lives and to make their organization more productive. But with how natural LLMs sound, it was obvious that customer service officers will be replaced.

The Reality:

AI is awesome, however due to the non-deterministic nature of AI and the issues with hallucinations make them very likely to fall in the ways that matter the most. So much so that earlier Pilots failed miserably.

The problem is not that AI is bad, but the nature of it makes it a bad customer service officer like the taco bell bot allowing users to order 18000 water bottles.

These are just edge cases, the more visible ones. I am sure there are thousands of cases that have not come out due to embarrassment.

The reality is, customer service is a deeply human thing. And a system replacing it is harder than most tech bros think.

Also, after I started writing this article, cursor lied about building a browser and Anthropic about building a C compiler. And if the models are the good at things they say they are good at, then you know it is hyped.

Of course there are lots of things AI is great at, but replacing humans isn’t one of them, despite trillions of dollars being pumped and counting. I heard they are going to space next, maybe that’ll stop the aliens from visiting us?