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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   33894 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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LLMs should be compared with customer service agents... if an agent was unhelpful would you stay on the line or just hang up and call a new one? I hang up until I get someone helpful... LLM sessions should be used similarly.

Does this really work for human customer service agents? I would have presumed that they're following a pre-planned script for most issues.

I used to work in a call center because the economy was awful after 2008.... there's a big difference between how helpful, motivated and clever a particular rep might be (though tbh post 2008 you did get some very smart people working in menial jobs b/c the economy was awful).

This dovetails a bit with my footnote below about figuring out what "box" a person's world is. CSRs have scripts for the majority of the issues that they see on a regular basis. Task number one is to figure out whether your issue fits within one of their scripted boxes. If so, you're probably in good shape. If not, then individual quality can vary substantially. I've had multiple experiences where, after determining that my situation did not fit their script, it was very apparent that it would be important to get a person whose box extended beyond the scripts and included the knowledge/intelligence sufficient to work the problem. I've had times where, for example, they told me they could solve the problem, but they could not explain how the steps would work well enough that I was comfortable proceeding. A hang-up and a call back later, and I got someone who was very capable of conceptualizing the problem properly, taking a few minutes to work through how a solution would work, and (critically) explaining how it was going to work. Whether a simple call back to another Tier 1 CSR will get you that type of person versus having to fight to get to a Tier 2 person may vary.

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