the last decade of rule based call bot customer service, like calling a bank for credit card updates, feels like the scale up of fast food hamburgers: empty calories but convenient to at scale.

voice agents at best are promising a renaissance of customer support with personable, helpful, and agentic responses. at best, they will augment human support or fill in gaps that are missing. they can connect to tools, like calendars for scheduling, and automate different internal workflows.

but at their wose, they’ll be a buger at shake shack: higher quality than alternatives rule based chat bots, more expensive, all while only being marginally better.

this last week i was reminded about the importance of great customer service at one of my least favorite experiences: a trip to the dentist.

kicking off this most recent journey, was a bad experience at a local office that i’ve been trying out the last year. it’s conveniently down the street, but totally unreliable for appointment times. first trip in, a 2p appointment was seen 15min before closing at 445p. second trip in was a 3hr wait for an appointment first thing in the morning so i had to cancel. this doesn’t make sense for me. if the appointments are that far delayed, then schedule later.

and so i switched to a dentist across town to see how a small office might compare to the larger conglomerate.

it’s a bit of a trek, and a $60 in lyft to get there and back, but in the search for better service i figured it’s worth the data point.

and this weekend’s trip, not only was it worth the data point, but it reminded me why switch:

• from entry to exit: thirty minutes
• the main thing i needed, a cap on the tooth took less than 5min
• and the dentist answered all my questions and felt like he had my back

let’s take a step back.

first, this wasn’t augmented with voice agents, for those wondering when they come back into this piece. more soon. this was human to human customer service. one receptionist, one dental assistant, and one dentist that could see about 5-8 patients an hour if that saturday afternoon was an average showing of throughput.

first, it started with a phone call to switch. in less than 2min and with no awkward information exchange, i got a date and time to show up.

my favorite part of that interaction, was the receptionist saying: don’t spell your name. please just say it. what that told me was that they have shorthand for their scheduling, and will figure it out when processing welcome intake. efficient.

next, when i was in the chair for initial check for a chipped front tooth, the assistant wanted to take a single tooth x-ray to confirm the fixing. i thought it was a small cosmetic fix, but i don’t know standard procedure. so in first minute when she starts setting up x-ray, the dentist comes in.

he asks: what’s this for?

they say: x-ray.

he comes to me: what do you need?

i opened my mouth and pointed at my front tooth: a cap.