Latest news with #customerservice
Telegraph
18 hours ago
- Telegraph
‘Travelodge tried to silence me with £89 after I was attacked by bed bugs'
Has a company treated you unfairly? Our Consumer Champion is available to help. For how to contact her click here. Dear Katie, For my birthday, I stayed at the Leicester City Centre Travelodge on May 26 for one night, and suffered the most dreadful shock during the night. I started feeling itchy, and thought something was biting me. When I searched the bed sheets, I found they were riddled with bed bugs. As it turns out, the room was severely infested, and not in any way fit for guests to stay in. I reported it to reception the next morning, where a staff member reviewed the photos and videos that I took. She was very apologetic, and said the manager would get in touch that same day to arrange compensation. However, no one ever did. Not only was this a horrible taint on my birthday, but I've also got underlying health issues including diabetes, which means my skin doesn't heal as fast as other people's. The stress of all this has seen my diabetes markers increase, and I have to seek medical advice. After chasing a few times, someone from Travelodge's customer services team finally responded. He confirmed that 'an infestation of pests was found in your room', which has apparently since been treated. He offered a full room refund of £38.99, as well as £50 compensation, but only if I agreed to a confidentiality clause preventing me from telling anyone about the incident or posting online. Quite honestly, this feels really off to me. Do you think this is a reasonable offer considering what happened? – Anon Dear reader, I was so sorry to hear that your birthday night away was ruined by this infestation of micro predators that feed on human blood during the night. Following the initial horror of discovering the room was severely infested with the pests, you've been left with scores of itchy red bites all over your skin. Possibly due to your diabetes, these have not healed after a few weeks, and since your wedding is coming up in just a couple of months, you are extremely stressed about them disappearing in time for your big day. Given the stress caused, you feel Travelodge's offer of £88.50 – if you sign a confidentiality clause to say you won't tell anyone about it – is unacceptable, and I completely agree with you. Especially after the way your serious complaint was pushed into the long grass and ignored. In fact, I have rarely heard of a company asking anyone to sign a confidentiality agreement for such a laughable amount of money before, so I was more than happy to take up your case. I told Travelodge that I felt the amount of compensation was far too low, and that you would not be happy to remain silent about your experience or any compensation you receive. You had already told me for a start, and I was planning to write an article about it in a national newspaper. It got back to you with a significantly higher offer of £500, which it said was 'full and final'. You asked me whether I thought this was fair, and I said I felt this amount certainly felt more proportional to the degree of suffering you had been subjected to. However, I warned you under no circumstances to accept the offer as 'full and final'. This was because there was now a very real risk that you could have inadvertently taken the bed bugs home and your own bedroom could be infested. After all, this is how bed bugs are spread – it's not necessarily because of poor hygiene or uncleanliness. Once they take hold in homes, they can be a nightmare to exterminate, potentially costing thousands of pounds to remove. So you replied saying you would accept the £500 on the basis that you reserve the right to bill Travelodge should a subsequent infestation arise at your home. Travelodge came back and offered to send out a pest control expert to your home to proactively inspect it and treat any infestation it finds, which we were both very happy to accept. However, there was a catch – it was not prepared to remove the confidentiality clause. I phoned its press office to let it know I was running this story with all the details, meaning the clause was pointless. Their reply was: 'Policy is policy.' Happily, just before this article went to press, common sense prevailed. Travelodge changed its mind and dropped the need for confidentiality from the agreement. It is still happy to pay you the compensation though, and organise the pest control visit. You have accepted its terms and will move on with your life. I wish you all the best with your upcoming nuptials, and sincerely hope the itchy bites are gone by then. A Travelodge spokesman said: 'We are very sorry to hear about the customer's recent stay with us. The safety and wellbeing of our customers is always our priority and we have robust prevention measures in place for bed bugs, an issue that affects the hospitality industry. 'Instances of bed bugs are extremely rare in our hotels, and we train our housekeeping colleagues to be vigilant and to spot early signs wherever possible. 'We have carried out a thorough investigation into the matter, apologised and offered her a gesture of goodwill. We hope that we can welcome her back to our hotels in the future and reinstate her faith in our brand.'
Bloomberg
21 hours ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Call Center Workers Are Tired of Being Mistaken for AI
By the time Jessica Lindsey's customers accuse her of being an AI, they are often already shouting. For the past two years, her work as a call center agent for outsourcing company Concentrix has been punctuated by people at the other end of the phone demanding to speak to a real human. Sometimes they ask her straight, 'Are you an AI?' Other times they just start yelling commands: 'Speak to a representative! Speak to a representative!' Lindsey, whose work involves selling and answering questions about credit cards for American Express, a Concentrix client, has developed her own tactics to try to calm customers. 'I tell them, 'I promise, I'm a real human.'' To demonstrate, she might cough or giggle, vocal tics she believes AI can't replicate. 'I even ask them, 'Is there anything you want me to say to prove that I'm a real human?''
Irish Times
a day ago
- General
- Irish Times
Brianna Parkins: Maybe people who won't think for themselves will start to bother AI and not us
As anyone who has ever worked in a shop frequented by the general public will tell you, people hate using their brains. They will avoid using mental energy if they can help it in any way possible. For example, during my time as a shop assistant I was asked on more than one occasion where the socks were while standing in front of a wall of socks. Under a big sign hanging from the ceiling, which said 'Socks'. Instead of the only socially acceptable response of laughing and going, 'What am I like, they would have bitten me ... etc,' one woman sighed impatiently and said, 'But where are the size 5-7s?!' As if I was the one slow on the uptake, when she was standing in front of a sign that read 'Sizes 5-7' in 72-point font. These people were not vision impaired. They did not need to harangue a teenage girl stressed with the Sisyphean task of trying to pair up a mound of identical black leather lace-up shoes during the Back-to-School sale. If they had taken five minutes to give even the most cursory glance around, I wouldn't have minded. At least they would have attempted to figure it out on their own. But no, they'd march straight up to the nearest worker, even if they were 10 customers deep, to demand where to find something. No danger of using up any brain cells there. When I sold jewellery, more than one man asked me if they should buy their future spouse's engagement ring in gold or silver. As if I, the strange woman they had just met for the first time, would know more about the preferences of the woman they shared a bed with every night. The woman they were hoping to spend the rest of their life with. 'How am I supposed to know that?' one shrugged as if this type of esoteric knowledge was lost forever when the Library of Alexandria burned. READ MORE Instead, because it was the early days of social media, I had to scour her grainy Facebook photos taken on a 1-megapixel camera to see if her chunky heart locket was a silver or a gold looking blur. If only there was a simpler way. Like checking her jewellery box or using his eyes before he left the house to buy the most important piece of metal he would ever give to someone. I remember wrapping up the white-gold ring and wondering if I should have slipped in a note, warning her against saying 'yes' to his proposal. I imagined her future: a lifetime of him bellowing that he could not find something in the cupboard and her having to stop what she was doing, pad into the kitchen and hiss, 'Here!' while grabbing the item that was right in front of his face. Please don't misunderstand me. I am not anti-help. I like helping people. I'll always stop and bother to give a tourist decent directions. I've gladly lifted the front of many a pushchair to help a mum carry it down busy train station stairs. I will never begrudge help where it is needed. It is those who refuse to use even the smallest bit of brain power to help themselves that annoy me. In the many Facebook groups I belong to, this is on full display. The wanton wasting of other people's time and attention by asking questions that should have been a private Google search . For example, in a group for Irish people moving to Australia it would be fine to ask, 'Which suburbs are great to live in with small children?' and, 'Can I call the police to remove a spider from the kitchen ... what if very big?' Those are things you can only really know from experience. The village should be stepping up to help out with their collective knowledge. I would love to tell you when it's Irish week at Aldi here in Sydney, and cans of Club Orange are in the middle aisle. [ Moving to Ireland helped me understand my mother, her peculiarities and weird secrecy Opens in new window ] It is the anonymous members firing, 'Do I need a visa to work in Australia?' into the group that really annoys me. There are entire websites funded by taxpayers to tell you this information. Just look it up. Use some critical thinking , I beg you. 'Does anyone know why they won't accept my Irish prescription at the pharmacy?' Yes, I do. You've answered your own question with the word 'Irish'. Perhaps the only good thing about artificial intelligence is that all the annoying people who refuse to think for themselves will start to bother it and not us with their questions. Maybe that's how we stop it from taking our jobs and becoming our robot overlords. It will get tired of spitting out personal training plans and simple emails for head wrecks that they could have just as easily looked up themselves, and simply choose to self-destruct.
Forbes
2 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
An AI Agent Customers Love To Use? Yes, It's Possible—Here's How
Mike Murchison is CEO of Ada, an AI-powered platform transforming how brands around the world interact with the people that love them. We've all had the frustration of dealing with an AI customer service agent that simply isn't as good as a human. You're chatting about buying a family phone plan. So, how much does the basic plan cost? The AI agent quickly answers that question. But when you ask to switch to that family plan, you get plunged into a queue to speak with a representative. And forget about asking the agent to recommend the best plan based on your calling history. It obviously has no clue. Which raises the question: What makes a 'good' AI customer service agent? Right now, the best way to gauge an AI agent's capability is by measuring it against a person. For an entry-level human agent, the average bar is a 70% first call resolution (FCR) rate and an 80% customer satisfaction score (CSAT). A good AI agent will match or exceed those benchmarks. Sadly, today, most fall woefully short. And it's not a capability issue—under the hood, today's AI agents are powerful enough to handle complex challenges. The real problem is that most companies aren't integrating their agents into the business. They build a knowledge base, but don't empower the agent to actually help customers or personalize the customer experience. In other words, they never take off the training wheels. When 53% of consumers say they'd "consider switching to a competitor if they found out a company was going to use AI for customer service," that's a problem. It doesn't have to be that way. Here are three critical capabilities that any AI customer service agent needs to start realizing its full potential. 1. Domain Expertise: Does the agent know its stuff? With a new AI agent, the first step is giving it expertise in the company's domain. How much knowledge does the agent have to do its job? Let's say you're shopping for a pair of glasses online. At a simple level, any AI agent should be able to handle FAQs and deliver basic product information. But this is just the start. A more advanced AI agent will have deep knowledge of the entire product line, drawing from a broad pool of company resources and insights from fellow employees. To get here requires an ingredient too many companies overlook: coaching. Just like any new employee, AI needs regular coaching from a manager. When this is done right, the agent grows more helpful and accurate over time. It doesn't just recommend glasses, for instance—it goes deep on the pros and cons of different frames and what faces they work best with. 2. Personalization: Does the agent know you? Every capable AI agent must be able to personalize its exchanges with customers. The key question here is: How intimately does the agent know the person it's helping? On a foundational level, the AI agent at your bank should know your name. Moving up in sophistication, without having to speak to you, it should know all of your account info, including the fact that you bought a particular index fund last month. A capable agent builds on that foundation by tailoring its answers and actions to you. It knows you prefer easy-to-understand explanations to financial jargon, for example. It also knows your preferred channel—phone rather than text—and the best time of day to call you. Plus, it can recommend another index fund that better suits your needs. That kind of personalization is a hit with consumers, who "ranked customized sales offers as the number one positive impact of AI on customer service." 3. Task Automation: Can the agent actually get stuff done? A third critical skill for a capable AI agent is task automation. Here, we're talking about how good the agent is at doing things for customers on its own. This is the difference between merely supplying information ('To open a checking account, visit your local branch') and actually taking action on a customer's behalf ('Leave it with me! I'll open a new account and text you when it's ready'). Like domain expertise and personalization, task automation requires coaching to level up. Out of the box, an agent should be able to do something simple with a short time horizon, like help a customer reset their password. A more advanced agent will be able to handle complex tasks with a longer time frame—for example, taking charge of approving or denying an insurance claim. What's needed to reach a high level of task automation? Granting the agent executive function so it's not just an information source. That means giving it access to company tools and systems, but also ensuring it can interact with humans in the company for approval and oversight. A good agent, for instance, might determine that an insurance claim is valid but defer to a human team member for final approval before sharing news with the customer. One caveat: For businesses using AI customer support, it's important to remember that evaluating an agent's performance isn't a box-ticking exercise. It's a spectrum. The limits of domain expertise, personalization and task automation are continually expanding as AI improves. AI's ability to gather feedback from interactions and self-learn promises to push customer service to new levels. That's why, at the end of the day, benchmarking an AI agent against a human is just an initial litmus test. Companies can and should aspire to more than just meeting our low collective bar for customer service. Deployed correctly, AI can raise the bar and turn merely 'satisfied' users into customers for life. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
Forbes
2 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
How AI Agents Can Help Improve Employee Happiness
Rohan Joshi is the CEO and co-founder of Wolken Software , a leading IT service management and customer service desk software provider. getty When AI was first introduced into the customer service process of global B2B organizations, there was understandable skepticism about how employees would react. Would they worry the tech would replace their jobs? Would fear prevent adoption and limit the potential business benefits? Over the last five years, AI-powered customer service has seen significant growth. In 2021, AI chatbots alone saw a 45% year-over-year increase in use. By 2023, just over two-thirds of consumers were happy with their last chatbot interaction. And customer service employees? It turns out they are satisfied with AI as well. Instead of worry or fear, they have embraced a technology that has increased their job satisfaction and happiness. Since happier employees are more productive employees, how can B2B business leaders harness the power of AI for their customer service teams? AI is extremely powerful, but it is not a magic bullet. Introducing it blindly without a clear strategy and measurable goals in place is a recipe for disaster in terms of both customer satisfaction and customer service employee morale. What can AI do for customer service processes? For B2B organizations, it can address lower-level issues and menial tasks so that human employees can focus on higher value escalations. As a result, smaller problems can be resolved faster to the benefit and satisfaction of both customers and employees. It's useful to view AI as an assistant to customer service agents. The tech can handle smaller issues without the agent needing to get involved. For more complex issues, AI can help human agents resolve issues faster by pulling relevant information in near real time. For customer service employees, AI can enable increased productivity and reduce burnout from repetitive, low-level tasks. Both of these can help lead to happier, more engaged employees and less turnover, which is good for the overall health of the team. With an understanding of what AI can do for B2B customer service teams, the next step is to understand the ways employees might be impacted and how they may need education to use new tools effectively. The use of AI may change former customer service processes, and this change may necessitate some general upskilling. Take data security as an example. Customer service employees should understand which data AI can access and how AI can access it securely and appropriately. Data may be input into a knowledge base for one purpose and AI will unintentionally use it for another purpose. Making sure your customer success teams can understand AI is crucial for them to be able to use it effectively. Step 3: Set expectations at the beginning. As with any major technology implementation, it's important for business leaders to be transparent with employees about what they can expect from the outset. For B2B organizations introducing AI into their customer service stack, this means communicating with the relevant team members early and often about what is changing, as well as when and how it will impact them. Reassure employees that AI is not replacing them. Be clear about the uses of AI in the customer service process and explain the benefits employees can expect from AI support in their day-to-day work. Step 4: Measure and adjust. As with any tech initiative, it's important to measure its impact at regular intervals. If B2B organizations want to ensure AI is having a positive impact on their customer service teams, one of the easiest ways to do this is simply to ask employees. Working with (instead of dictating to) employees about how AI can make their day-to-day jobs easier and more fulfilling is hugely impactful. Surveying employees on the benefits of AI implementation is a relatively low-lift way to get real-time feedback. Another consideration for AI may be how it can help improve the work-life balance for customer service agents. If a server going down over the weekend or during a holiday can be identified and resolved by AI rather than requiring human intervention, employees are less likely to get burnt out by the feeling that they're "always on." Again, asking employees how AI can improve customer service processes and then listening to their feedback can be impactful in increasing happiness and reducing turnover. Step 5: Be flexible and prepared to iterate. When it comes to AI, B2B business leaders can be sure of one thing: the technology will continue to evolve and disrupt business at a breakneck pace. Keep the lines of communication between IT and customer service open so that cross-organizational teams can work together to make sure that the technology is being implemented in ways that keep both end users and customer service agents happy and satisfied. Many B2B companies have seen AI implementations lead to improved customer service scores. While there is still a healthy amount of skepticism about AI among customer service agents, these results can help increase satisfaction at work while fueling new career growth paths through reskilling and upskilling initiatives within their company. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
