eBay Has AI Respond to Customers to Save Time and Money

by: Ina

BTW, eBay's CEO didn't say if the company discloses to customers that the responses are AI generated.  

by: Alfacar

My account was permanently suspended from buying and selling. I wonder if that was thanks to AI reading and writing?

by: COVID-19

AI is disgusting. Ptui! On the other hand, given that most of eBay's CS just read from scripts anyways and can't actually solve callers' problems, this won't make a difference.....

Oh well, as long as the stupid, LAZY humans keep tolerating this garbage, more and more shall be pushed on you.

by: GetAGrip

In the last seven years I can count on one finger the number of times I have called sleazebay for anything. I have four stores and solve the problems I have myself. Refund, block, leave negative positive in capital letters and move on. Calling sleazebay always has been a losing deal. Instead of paying over 1200.00 a month for stores I now just pay less than 300.00 the savings pays for a lot of refunds. I practice what I preach, if I can't afford to lose it I don't list it. Sleazebay can kiss my royal arse crack for all I care. I'm not playing their games.

by: RL15

the walmart dope strikes again.....


waves his magic wand........poof......more useless employees / contractors gone....

magical innovations

by: Snapped

Customer service isn’t black and white.  It isn’t ones and zeros. Not some I/O switch controlled process.  A script is just a directory in the lobby.  Tier one to a competent troubleshooter, but not the whole book.

eBay is sending a clear message they don’t understand that, and that to them, their customers and their ‘needs’ are not worth the cost of human interaction, because, to them, their customers are nothing but an abstraction.  A constant in an algorithm.  A digit in a database.  Outsourceable.  Interchangeable.  As intangible as the decimal points in their spreadsheets and spins.  

Made more anonymous now, so they can feel even less compelled to care, while still appearing to.  

by: Rexford

"Jamie Iannone boasted to Wall Street that he is using generative AI to save on the number of customer support agents that are needed to respond to issues between buyers and sellers."

It's all about money. The fewer customer support agents the more money in Jamie's and the c-suite's pockets.  Can you imagine what selling on eBay would be like if the CEO of eBay cared as much about eBay sellers as he does Wall Street?

Get ready to beat your head against a wall when you need a problem solved.  As if we weren't already beating our heads against a wall.

by: toolguy

I found a company whose customer service is harder to get a hold of than eBay is

Frontier Communication    

by: AddyUp

I suspect that AI is also used to police their forums. Either that or I've run into a rep with a grudge.

I can't think of any other way to explain their appalling decisions from what eBay laughingly calls customer service.

by: ebayout

GIGO

by: Stone Cutter

*** It is now a way of life ***

Customer service has become too expensive for a company like eBay filled with low volume Sellers.

There are too many Sellers on sites like eBay and Etsy who don’t make enough in profits, per month, to pay for a phone call.

On the Etsy forum, I hear of Sellers who want to call Etsy about everything from why their sales dried up in January, to Sellers who complain about not being on the first page of Search. Those phone calls become expensive every time a customer service rep picks up that phone.

Ebay has over 18 million Sellers with only a small percentage of Sellers who are truly successful in making any real money for eBay. Ebay could easily become overloaded if even a very small percentage of Sellers were to make a phone call.

Incorporating AI could be better then no customer service, at all.
Next for AI will be your internet provider, your utility company, and your bank.

If you don’t see the true nature of AI then you are not paying attention. AI and robotics will soon become a normal way of life for businesses and consumers.

by: Snapped

“… found a company whose customer service is harder…”

, said the lemming to its mom.  “All the other one’s are doing it…”

by: pace306

Please never put “intelligence” and eBay in the same sentence - single celled creatures will be upset!

eBay 1) used AI do it would be “cool “ and 2) cause it saves them money which they can use to buy back shares - making it appear that they are doing ok. (They aren’t)

Snapped (of course) is correct - most interactions are lot simple yes/no issues. They require real live human beings to make real time judgments.

Ebay overseas CS was/is relatively cheap. A few people, a few bucks an hour. Jaime spends more on his wand,cape and Magic lessons then all that, not to mention a random dinner with Mrs magician

eBay will AI itself into the grave if the grown ups don’t take charge soon.

Magic is for kids parties not business

by: Stone Cutter

@Pace306

“Ebay overseas CS was/is relatively cheap. A few people, a few bucks an hour. “

You are incorrect in your assessment. When companies look for overseas help, they hire overseas firms that have huge farms of customer service reps. And these firms are NOT cheap. Outside of hourly wages, these firms charge for training, computer equipment, general office space, general business expenses, and the associated taxes for doing business overseas.

The overseas employee may not make much per hour, but these contracting firms charge good money for an “already made” CS department.

Same holds true here in the U.S. If any business does not want to take on the task of individually hiring employees while paying for lease space, more companies are turning to CS contracting firms for help.  

by: ebayout

I'm sure AI is great at if/then scenarios, which is a huge percent of CS.

What does it draw on to make unique value judgments...a digital coin flip?

by: lessthanthreerecords

I have a different name for AI.  I call it AS, which stands for artificial stupidity.  I have never interacted with a machine and had a positive experience.  Of course, some are worse than others, but never positive.  With that said, eBay's human support has been consistently spiraling downward for the last 15 years.  In the last 4 years, it has gotten so bad that I've found any statement made is far more likely to be wrong than right.  I do not imagine "AS" service will be any better, but in eBay's case, it would be tough to get much worse!

by: None Such

As already noted, may not make any difference since the existing customer service reps had no authority to think independently to resolve a problem.  They just read a script.  A computer can do that just as well.  Now, if only eBay cared about actually solving seller problems.  

@ Stone Cutter:  I hope I misread your comment and you were not in fact disparaging small sellers.  Every seller on eBay deserves support.  Obviously large sellers should get preference, that makes sense given the greater revenue they may bring in.  But everyone deserves a fair shake.  Small or large.  

by: Jon M

eBay can say they're using AI, but its little more than the usual call tree which pushes callers off to a knowledge base, where callers eventually give up. eBay labels this successful CS experiences.

by: cfrphoto

Automated or AI responses to intermediate or advanced users inevitably require agent responses.

by: fof9l

I've noticed the same thing in the last few weeks, and it's not intelligence, but stupidity.  I've lost count of the number of times when, in answer to a simple question, the response from the auto chatbot has been (something like)  ''I'm sorry, I don't understand the question. Please rephrase it or put it another way.''

There are only so many ways one can put ''GET ME AN AGENT'', but sometimes even that seems to stump the bot. Sometimes I like to respond with something that is well outside its AI programming - last week, in a fit of frustration, I typed ''It was a simple request. Are you stupid?''  Of course, I got the same standard reply.

eBay has gotten too big for its boots (or should that be, ''its bots''??)