The word "need" is loaded and almost seems to be besides the point to me.
Your father-in-law wants to talk a human rather than self-serve. What's the problem with that? Honest question. The fact that he can self-serve is an undisputed fact. But why should he be expected to?
It might be more expensive for companies to offer the level of service that a lot of customers are asking for. If they want to offer that level of service they might have to raise their prices. If people want to pay those prices in order to get that level of service then who cares?
At thbe end of the day, a company is selling its products to people. And people come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and have all sorts of varied preferences.
There are people out there who do not want to own a smart phone. Who don't want to have to study a web page. They paid for something, they want it to "just work" and when it doesn't they want the burden of fixing it to be on the company they are giving their money to.
If a company doesn't want to offer that level of service, they don't have to. But they should expect to lose a certain demographic as a result. I don't think the chief complaint is that self-service options exist but that industries in general tend to chase trends. AI support can keep costs down for a company, great. But the trade-off for that is that there are people willing to pay more for human support and they often find themselves without options because everything always seems to be "all or nothing" with trends in business.
Your father-in-law wants to talk a human rather than self-serve. What's the problem with that? Honest question. The fact that he can self-serve is an undisputed fact. But why should he be expected to?
It might be more expensive for companies to offer the level of service that a lot of customers are asking for. If they want to offer that level of service they might have to raise their prices. If people want to pay those prices in order to get that level of service then who cares?
At thbe end of the day, a company is selling its products to people. And people come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and have all sorts of varied preferences.
There are people out there who do not want to own a smart phone. Who don't want to have to study a web page. They paid for something, they want it to "just work" and when it doesn't they want the burden of fixing it to be on the company they are giving their money to.
If a company doesn't want to offer that level of service, they don't have to. But they should expect to lose a certain demographic as a result. I don't think the chief complaint is that self-service options exist but that industries in general tend to chase trends. AI support can keep costs down for a company, great. But the trade-off for that is that there are people willing to pay more for human support and they often find themselves without options because everything always seems to be "all or nothing" with trends in business.