The hidden cost of AI-first support? I've become the person customers only reach when they're already angry - and it's taking its toll.
Our AI support agent is fan-fuckin'-tastic.
It handles the vast majority of the easy wins. It even handles a good number of the not-so-easy wins.
For everything else - the truly pissed off users, the frustrated users - those land on my desk.
And boy oh boy is it tough to be the bad guy all.the.time.
User wants a refund because they upgraded their plan clearly to only use a feature on that plan, then downgraded again? Bad guy.
User canceled their plan then got pissed that suddenly the features they had were unavailable to them? Bad guy.
And, I get it. I do.
These are real people, genuinely frustrated, and in their mind they've already been passed around by a bot before they even got to me. I'm not just handling a complaint - I'm absorbing everything that came before it too.
The AI gets the wins. I get the fallout.
Nobody talks about this when companies go AI-first. The success metrics look clean; resolution rates up, response times down.
But, somewhere in that data is a human quietly absorbing 100% of the frustration, complexity, and bad news delivery.
That's the hidden cost. Not enough people are asking who's paying it.
