[HN Gopher] Automation != Leverage
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Automation != Leverage
Author : sethkim
Score : 54 points
Date : 2021-11-02 17:51 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (sethkim.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (sethkim.me)
| debarshri wrote:
| People often mix automation and abstraction. In some cases it is
| interchangeable. In lot of scenarios it is not. In my opinion
| there is true automation, for example automatic bank account
| creation, automated sales etc and then there is abstraction where
| you thinking you are automating but in reality you are adding n+1
| tools. For instance, automated chatbot is an abstraction of a
| customer rep, if 90% of inbound ends up with an customer rep.
| sethkim wrote:
| I like the idea of "abtracting" a human with automated
| processes. I think you're right that a semi-automated chatbot
| is exactly that. The thing to be super careful about in such
| cases is whether the automated component is purely beneficial,
| and be rigorous with data to ensure it is.
| jcutrell wrote:
| I take some issue with the comparison as an either-or.
|
| Automation in its correct place shouldn't replace human effort -
| it should augment that effort.
|
| In this case, it seems one step removed to just do both of these
| approaches, starting with the first. During the process of
| finding those 100 high-confidence matches, you could identify the
| ones that have the most general cases, and reuse the email copy
| from those.
|
| I think the idea that automation is intended to replace human
| effort wholesale is improper. We should rely on automation to
| handle where computers are better than humans, to give the human
| more time to do things humans are better at.
| sethkim wrote:
| Thanks for this comment. I think there's an important
| distinction that's worth clarifying.
|
| Automation is great in most circumstances, and truly does free
| humans to do more meaningful work. But my take is that you can
| quickly push up against cases where it's unclear that you've
| improved a situation. It's easy to make the judgement that you
| have when you reduce time spent on doing "mundane" work.
|
| Perhaps there is a heuristic that can be developed to let
| someone quickly assess the usefulness of automating a certain
| task. Would be happy to discuss this more.
| rambambram wrote:
| This article couldn't come at a better time for me. I have a list
| of websites/businesses in my area that could profit from a
| redesign, which I happen to offer with my website builder. I'm
| now contemplating if I should automate this and go shotgun-method
| in the hopes some prospects turn into customers, or I could put
| in more time but also quality to convince only a small percentage
| of the list to become customers.
|
| Stuff for thought. Thanks for the article.
| shane_b wrote:
| I would lean towards quality. In my sales efforts, shotgun
| approach rarely works and anecdotally is working less over
| time.
|
| Until you have case studies and social proof, shotgun will
| never work imo. Referrals are more important than ever.
| rambambram wrote:
| Thanks, that's also my experience. Besides, it will never
| hurt to try something new.
| sethkim wrote:
| Glad to hear!
|
| A lot of my outbounding efforts with Mantis have fallen flat
| when I sent something that was more or less templated, but have
| had better results with something far more personalized.
|
| Here's a fantastic article that might be worth a read:
| https://cloutly.com/blog/cold-email-template/.
| rambambram wrote:
| Thanks for another article! Reading now. Your inbrowser chat
| app Mantis looks good too. And your text on the homepage got
| me scrolling to the end. Good luck!
| dgb23 wrote:
| Good article! Two things popped into my head when reading it.
| First the talk "Programming with Hand Tools" by Tim Edwald[0].
| It's a very cool, entertaining talk with emphasis on the
| craftsmanship side of things and provokes thinking about which
| parts to automate (or maybe abstract away) and which parts to
| craft by hand when we're building stuff. Aside: also reminds me
| of Casey Muratori's Handmade Hero project [1]. He is a strong
| advocate for structuring things bottom up and building them
| ourselves.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShEez0JkOFw
|
| [1] https://handmadehero.org
|
| ---
|
| Secondly when reading this:
|
| > Regardless, the basic idea is that companies are often faced
| with the decision of doing N units of shitty work or far fewer
| than N units of great work.
|
| This is obviously oversimplified, but there is an important point
| that wants to emerge from this line of thought.
|
| As someone who grew up on open source, standardized technologies
| and the Web, I have been empowered to build a livelihood on Web
| development, mostly "self-taught" (or rather self-directed). All
| of this Web stuff is very accessible and gives you actual
| _leverage_. You can build something useful very quickly and the
| community around it is happy to share so much knowledge and work.
| I'm _very_ thankful for that.
|
| But I think as the wider web development community we're losing
| sight of what that essence is. We started to think of the Web as
| merely a vehicle for pure scale as in "how to reach the most
| people and annoy them with notifications" and "how to produce
| cheap software very fast".
|
| Maybe we, or some of us, should slow the fuck down a notch and
| think about producing valuable things for the specific needs,
| pain points or taste of actual people. What the article describes
| is a process of thinking about the real people and building a
| human connection. The "top 100" costumers in the article are most
| likely people who _actually_ need/want/use the damn thing if they
| see your point. Instead of trying to manipulate the masses to buy
| a lot of crap (excuse my meta), we should be building
| relationships. One very good reason for this is that only the
| latter is sustainable - on all the axis of what "sustainable"
| means.
|
| I'm writing this "out loud" partly because I started to drift
| into this abstraction/automation mindset myself more and more.
| But yes, leverage is solving real problems.
| amelius wrote:
| Reminds me of:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087819
| dgb23 wrote:
| As much as I like the idea, those hourly rates seem _way_ too
| low.
| amelius wrote:
| > those hourly rates seem way too low
|
| Perhaps they use investor money to make up for the difference
| (a kind of growth hacking). Perhaps their idea is to replace
| workers by AI at some point.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Presumably you're getting someone in a call center in
| Bangladesh who's lucky to get $100 a month for 60 hour weeks.
| mlok wrote:
| From their website's FAQ :
|
| Who Are The Assistants? Where Are They Located?
|
| Magic is fully remote with an operational headquarters in
| Manila. We hire smart generalists who are resourceful, fast
| on the computer, 100% fluent in English, and have graduated
| from top universities in the Philippines.
|
| Our assistants are looking to work remotely for startups or
| small to midsize businesses. We do not operate a "call
| center"--we have a screening process for the companies we
| work with, and we pay our assistants significantly above the
| market rate.
|
| Magic Dedicated Assistants are paid well above the
| Philippines' minimum wage of $9 per day (source).
| sethkim wrote:
| This is interesting. You are the second person on this thread
| to think that Mantis outsources calls to someone else (it does
| not).
|
| What on the website makes you think that? Important for me to
| know so I can clarify it to visitors.
| Msw242 wrote:
| Mantis is 30/mo?
|
| OP can you tell us more about pricing model? 30 seems quite low,
| especially given that it is audio.
|
| That only buys like 10 hours of time in the Philippines, for
| example.
|
| How does pricing scale and what is included?
| Aulig wrote:
| I assume you have to take the calls yourself, Mantis is only
| the software.
| sethkim wrote:
| Yes, exactly right.
|
| I'm curious what would indicate otherwise...
| pydry wrote:
| I worked for a company once that was trying to let people book
| something online that people often did by talking to salespeople
| in a shop. These companies were slowly dying as people started to
| do it more online.
|
| Their initial strategy was to automate the crap out of
| everything. They would try to to keep margins low and part of
| that was to try to avoid having people talk to non-scaleable
| customer sales agents.
|
| They did pretty poorly in the beginning until they decided to do
| a 180 and allow people to have full control in the sales funnel
| over when they would like to use the website and when to talk to
| a person (including not using the website the whole way if they
| so chose).
|
| When they did this sales and profits took off like a rocket.
|
| They then hired enough customer service agents to service demand
| this way (which was a lot).
|
| I thought it was interesting that they kind of stumbled from 100%
| automation to a kind of hybrid model that hit an amazing sweet
| spot.
|
| They did try to reduce certain types of call volume by A/B
| testing website copy and the like but they always made it super
| easy to pick up a phone and give a code and instantly talk to
| someone who could see all their details and never tried to
| discourage anybody even if doing it online was trivial.
| phamilton wrote:
| I expect they also made it super easy to _not_ have to talk to
| customer support as well.
|
| Millenial/GenZ jokes aside, having to talk to someone can be a
| massive deterrent. I might be waiting at a doctor's office, on
| a train, etc. I can't tell you how many trials I've bailed on
| once I hit a mandatory "Talk to a salesperson" step.
| pydry wrote:
| The fact that pretty much the whole company was tech savvy
| and preferred to avoid talking to people when booking stuff
| online is what made this 180 doubly impressive, IMHO.
|
| The customers tended to be older, I think.
| sethkim wrote:
| Awesome story. Gives me a lot of confidence in the value that
| Mantis provides.
|
| There will always be people who don't need or want to speak to
| a human, but having the outlet to do so when it's useful to the
| customer can make a huge difference.
| [deleted]
| icebraining wrote:
| This sounds a lot like pg's Do Things that Don't Scale:
| http://paulgraham.com/ds.html
| sethkim wrote:
| Can't say I didn't take some inspiration from that idea!
| fitzn wrote:
| > sometimes it requires doing great work manually before you
| should ever consider automating the task
|
| I'd say this is the crux of it. You (or someone before you)
| should _always_ do something manually before automating it. If
| you see existing automation, make sure that it solves exactly the
| problem you have before you implement it. And the best way to see
| exactly the problem you have is... to do it manually.
| sethkim wrote:
| Yup. It's natural human tendency to reduce mundane work. But it
| can be illuminating how much you can improve results by
| stepping in and getting your hands dirty first.
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(page generated 2021-11-03 23:02 UTC)