Customer Support Chat Phone or AI

 

Just talk to each other.

Like it or not, AI is probably going to be your best bet.

Chat and phone are only as good as the training they get from the company they work for, and they only cover a portion of the situations. Since all AI is doing is scanning all the available public knowledge out there at super high speed and creating an answer that appears to be done by a human but, of course, is not.

Recently, I was trying to resolve an issue with my service provider for all 3 services, to simply get my brand new printer using the feature of wi-fi connection instead of USB connectors. One of the major roadblocks to starting with any new printer is that the cables get shorter and shorter to save money. So the solution is largely in the hands of someone like Amazon, which offers the right-length cord for your needs at an additional cost, of course.

So, the call to customer support largely went unanswered and resulted in several 5-minute on-hold sessions. At the same time, she probably talked to her supervisor to give me the packaged answer to resolving the problem, which they did not.

With the advent of 5G, which seems to be an upgrade from 2.4 GHz (stuff we really don't understand), the approach the faster networks are using is blending the two bandwidths into one to improve speed over the line. The problem is, even with a brand new printer, you can have a mismatch, and this printer worked on the interim internet supplier I had. (Monday--Rogers gone, Wednesday--Bell brought in with a few for a technician to install fully, and he only completed the Internet portion and left. Bell booted, so I used the Bell internet until my activation date came around for Freedom Mobile, who had the "easy-peasy" solution in their pitch. Bell booted. Kiss my Canadian @$$. No such animal here.) The printer does not work, and the final answer was for me to contact HP for how to resolve it because everything was working fine at their end.

So, ultimately, I have some options, but the first was to check out AI for possible solutions, and it came back with quite a detailed explanation of what needs to be done. (You look it up; no spoonfeeding here, and you need to use AI a lot more now.) Can I do what AI suggests, which seems very plausible? The answer is: do I want to go through that learning curve? I just want my HP printer that worked with Bell Fido to work with Freedom Mobile eero6 connections. A casual user of any computer system shouldn't attempt what is suggested by AI. You just dig yourself deeper and deeper, and it is just a waste of time.

Well, my solution ultimately was to forget about using a Wi-Fi connection for my printer and ask AI what cables I need for the specific model, the HP 4255e Deskjet all-in-one printer, and buy those cables in a longer length. I won't have my printer in the location I want since it will create a major tripping hazard due to a long USB cord running across the floor in a well-travelled path.

What I learned

• I should have gone to AI first with my problem.
• Go to the simplest solution to solving your problem, not the most elegant.
• Stay away from a poorly trained agent, which is relatively easy to figure out because of all the reading from script comments like "thank you for being so patient".
• It's time for businesses around the world to take the Chief Financial Officer and all their efficiency experts away from operations decisions and put solid Sales and Marketing people in charge, but with tight control on their spending. It has to be both doable and affordable, which I know from experience in my working days. We are a rare breed and grate the hell out of people with a canned system.

Y'all have a wunnerful day!