It turns out that Shopify's recent attempt to push merchants to their AI chatbots for customer support didn't go to well. Who could've guessed!? In fact, it went so poorly that the company is now making it easier once again to speak to a human. Shopify wrote:
“We heard you. After trying self‑serve, it wasn’t always clear how to reach a person. What’s new: we’ve added a ‘Chat with a human' button on Help Center pages that puts you directly into the lineup for an advisor. On a typical day, we reach most contacts within 5 minutes.”
How did they hear you? Did the AI support agents report back? LOL
All SaaS companies, e-commerce platforms, and marketplaces should take note of this news. It didn't work for Shopify, and it won't work well for you! Any platform that acts as a middleman between sellers and their buyers needs to provide their sellers with easy and immediate access to human support. Our livelihoods often depend on it! Frankly it should be required by law in the U.S., but there's no-one left in the government right now that would ever make that happen.
eBay apparently didn't get the memo… The company is currently taking the opposite approach and planning to ramp up its use of AI for customer support as part of a multi-year effort to cut operating costs, according to recent job posts on its career's page in search of a senior director of CX Engineering to “leverage AI to redefine our customer journey,” as spotted by Liz Morton of Value Added Resource.
In recent years, eBay has already deployed AI to read support emails, generate initial responses, and route tickets, which many sellers say is killing the quality of customer service. Don't worry guys, it'll only get worse from here!