Top Headlines In Customer Contact News This Week | 10/30/2023

Welcome to our newest series here at CCW Digital, “Top Headlines In CX News This Week,” where we’ll be handpicking and highlighting the most interesting news stories in customer contact just for your learning pleasure. 

Over the weeks, you can expect to read up current events, job market trends, social media viral moments, tech upturns and more. Today’s installment has some tricks, some treats and a whole lot of news:

Candy Corn Gets Some Sad CSAT Scores 

The end of October means costumes, parties, trunk-o-treat and every adult's favorite part: sifting through the kids’ unwanted candy while they sleep off their sugar high. Goodie bag grabbers might be disappointed this year, but all you candy corn fiends are in luck: CNN reports that sales for the sugary kernels have been falling steadily every year since at least 2018.

“Either people love it or hate it,” confectionery expert Beth Kimmerle explains. In her opinion, the CX side of the candy corn experience is lacking in both use case and consumer expectation: "Think about a Peep… you can coat it with sugar, you can colorize that sugar, you can color the inside of it. You can make it into different shapes. There is a lot of flexibility that you can have with marshmallows. But [candy corn,] it’s not really describable sweetness. And often it sort of defies what it should look like.”

Artists Lose Legal Battle Against AI Art Generators 

As they say, you want to train your AI to model your best agent, but would you want it to model your best painter? 

Concerns surrounding generative AI, data and knowledge ownership generative AI is growing well beyond the customer contact industry. Everyone from entertainment writers to doctors, authors and now artists are concerned about AI systems’ abilities to use real work, data and design to train and inform its content output.

Some artists who have taken legal against AI art generators have hit a roadblock in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit over the uncompensated and unauthorized use of billions of images downloaded from the internet to train AI systems, with a federal judge’s dismissal of most claims,” says the Hollywood Reporter. It seems like we’ll be riding through the AI Wild West for a while, folks…

Patient Care On Pause As Pharmacies Set To Strike 

Here’s something spooky for you: your pharmacy could shut down this coming month. NBC News reports that Walgreens, CVS and Rite Aid workers across the country may be planning to go on strike. Citing better working conditions, more staffing, better schedules and ample time to properly execute safety protocols, non-union pharmaceutical employees are prepared to walk under the idea that #PizzaIsNotWorking when it comes to employee satisfaction and retention. 

One pharmacist shares her experience with NBC, saying the lead-up to the strike was a "gradual decline” in employee satisfaction “in which management would repeatedly cut back on the hours for pharmacy technicians, which made it harder to train new hires. That created more work for experienced technicians, who would get burned out and quit.” As a result patients would receive poor service. But now it seems like some might not be getting any for a while. 

Chipotle Considers Automating Its Workflow

AI might be able to make art now, but the old-fashioned assembly line still has something to show in the world of customer service. Chipotle is considering integrating new devices into the burrito and bowl build-out process that CEO Brian Niccol says “could save time and eliminate a less favorable task” like scooping avocados. Among the new tools in development is a system that cuts, cores and scoops the fruit, in the hopes of giving employees more time to customize orders, interact with customers and move away from feelings of overwork. 

At a time when employees across industries are looking towards automation as a way to adjust workflows and fight the financial impact of inflation, it’s no surprise that the company, which just opened 62 new restaurants this quarter alone, is leaning into tech. Time will tell if the prototypes, much like their guac, will cost extra. 

The Law Labels Southwest Flight Delays A CX Fail

We’re taking down the Halloween decorations, but before we know it we’ll be taking to the winter skies and having those “home for the holidays” moments—just maybe not with Southwest Airlines. After last year’s canceled flight fiasco wherein over 2 millions customers were stranded, the company has amassed over 17,000 in customer lawsuits from which it says it cannot even begin to estimate the financial impact. For reference, those cancellations added up to at least $1.1 billion in lost sales and extra costs including refunds.

The Associated Press reports that federal regulators began investigating Southwest over the service collapse in January of this year, and the U.S. Department of Transportation has since come to the conclusion that “it has determined the company had failed to provide adequate customer service assistance, prompt flight status notifications, and proper and prompt refunds.” Now the company is facing civil penalties. 

Photo by Owen Lystrup on Unsplash.