Customer Careless
What happens when you are interested in buying something?
If the product is new for you, you talk to the customer care, to solve doubts and obtain information you need.
But in the so-called "artificial intelligence" era, many companies and shops have fallen into the trap of relying on automated system to take care of customers.
Standard questions
Do you have a standard question? Bots can be fine. "What is the price? Is the holiday offer still active? Does the family offer include parental control?" etc.
But if you have those self-defining "special needs" with bots you can be literally screwed.
Being a blind customer: bots experience
Large language models can be very helpful when properly trained: they can even describe images for you when you ask them for; they can summarize a specific part of a user manual, if asked.
But companies can decide what to allow or to block when customizing its automated assistant and, if they do not include image description or document summarizing, you're limited to ask those standardized questions. And operators help is not always guaranteed.
The operator and the blind customer
It's very, very rare to find an operator who's open to "explore" all fields of customer care.
Asking them to be 100% formed on what people with disability need, would be an ideal world and let's be realistic.
But if I say: "I am blind, could you please explain me how I can use this product" I'd at least expect someone to use words, not say "I send you a video". Am I asking too much?
In the automated assistance era, human assistance MUST give some extra benefits. That's what I want to find when approaching a shop. Because otherwise it's needless to pay someone if they talk like bots do!