Picture the call: a customer says their coffee tastes burnt, or their fridge "just doesn't feel right." There's no error code for that — no diagnostic to run. The rep has to figure out, in real time, whether it's the product or the person, without ever sounding like they're calling the customer wrong. Here's how that actually plays out, in service leaders' own words.
What we're hearing
"Customers [are] not knowing proper names and stuff like that... they will call in and say something very generic, like 'my system doesn't work.' So it's a lot of time spent trying to figure out what's not working." — Technical Support Supervisor, medical device company
"That's why customers come to us and say my machine doesn't work — because there's nothing on the machine that tells them this specific component isn't working." — Director of Technical Services, medical device company
One consumer appliance leader put it best:
"Every single inquiry that comes into our business... will fall into two buckets: is it the customer or is it the machine? And if you go down the wrong road, you've kind of pissed off the customer if you choose wrong." — VP of Customer Care & Technical Services, kitchen appliance company
"No one has, most of the time, a scientific thermometer that we will be able to trust. So now you have to navigate into the subjective conversation without offending a customer but still getting the right results." — same leader
Where AI helps
This is where reasoning matters more than scripts. Instead of a rigid decision tree, AI can ask the right clarifying questions in the moment — the same ones a veteran rep would know to ask — and weigh the answer against real product and service history instead of guesswork. That takes the guessing game off any one rep's shoulders and makes the outcome consistent, call after call.
Learn more about conversational AI or book time with Aquant.
