Phil Risher says AI chatbots handle basic questions fine, but they can't replace humans when customers panic. Someone without hot water doesn't want a bot. They need a person who can reschedule fast and actually care.
We don't have AI answering service. We have AI on our chat. To me, that seems pretty helpful because I will answer some direct questions for people that they might have. We get a whole copy of the chat so we can see that afterwards. And we reach out to customers. People calling us, are they either being proactive or it's a panic? They woke up, they have a cold shower, they're running late for work. They don't have any hot water. What are they going to do? They don't want to talk to a robot. Got to talk to somebody and make sure that person says, yep, I can move something around and make sure, you know, Frank gets out today at noontime. To me, AI is not going to do that. It may someday, but it's not not doing that now.
