In the age of artificial intelligence, people enjoy the convenience brought by high technology, while also being troubled by intelligent customer service across various industries. The sweet voice of robots repeats over and over, prompting you to press this key or that key, yet the actual problems remain unresolved. Customer service messages remind you to follow their public account or mini-program; after following a bunch, the final issue still cannot be resolved. For young people who are quick to accept new things and are adept at using smartphones, this is already frustrating; what about the elderly and those who cannot use smartphones?
My colleagues have a lot to say about a certain courier service. Despite the address being very detailed, the delivery is always sent to a collection point, and complaining does not help; next time it still goes to the collection point. After my last complaint, my package was delivered to the company reception, but this time it went back to the collection point. If it’s going to the collection point, fine, but they don’t send any information or make phone calls; if you don’t check, you wouldn’t know the package has been at the collection point for several days. When I called customer service to complain, the robot customer service rambled on, and none of the options were what I needed. Checking the logistics service revealed it was still the same delivery person from last time, which made me very angry. The logistics information kindly reminded me: complain less, and contact the delivery person directly if there’s an issue. Great, the delivery person is also very upset; sorting packages is done by robot intelligence, which directly allocates them to the large packages sent to the collection point. The delivery person said that for each package left at the collection point, they get 20 cents, while for each package delivered to the door, they get 1 yuan. If they are not allowed to leave it at the collection point, they will retrieve it tomorrow and have another courier responsible for door-to-door delivery re-deliver it.
During the pandemic, I remembered a shipment of cold chain reagents that was urgently needed by a client. The logistics information was stuck at the cargo yard, and no matter how I called customer service, it was always a robot; I could never communicate clearly with it and could not reach a human customer service representative. By the time the package arrived, the temperature of the refrigerated box had exceeded the limit, turning tens of thousands of yuan worth of reagents into a pile of garbage. Since the shipment was not insured, the courier only compensated for the delivery fee, and after multiple negotiations, they only reimbursed a small portion of the loss. If I could have contacted a person, this loss could have been completely avoided.
Although modern technology is convenient, humanized after-sales service is urgently needed across all industries. No one is idle enough to play around with complaints; for private enterprises, if after-sales service is not done well, the business can only shrink. As for state-owned enterprises, even with a large background, they cannot withstand the saying, “A thousand-mile dike collapses from an ant’s hole.”
There was once a popular saying online: “The post office’s lack of effort led to the success of SF Express,” “The lack of effort in communication led to the success of WeChat,” “The lack of effort in banking led to the success of Alipay.” It is both a saying and a fact. I hope that robot customer service can arrange for personalized service in the future, so that critical moments are not missed.