If efficiency cannot serve people, no matter how high the order volume is, loyalty cannot be built up, and no matter how intelligent the algorithm is, trust cannot be calculated. Every 'disappearing cake' may receive a negative review; Every 'disappearing customer service representative' may lose a user forever. Instant retail subsidies worth billions are flying everywhere, but when you really encounter problems, you may not even be able to find a customer service representative who can speak human language. Recently, the reporter encountered such a bad thing: he ordered a cream cake from Hema and casually gathered some snacks. When we received the goods, the 'protagonist' cake was gone and only a few packets of snacks were delivered. Upon checking the order, the cake inexplicably received a refund. Find customer service! We are so anxious here, but the machine customer service is still mechanically prompting us to choose "logistics issue, quality issue, or price issue". After finally switching to manual labor and a few twists and turns, I finally figured out that the cake was out of stock and had been silently refunded by the system. Inventory changes are a common occurrence in the industry, especially in the flash purchase business where online and offline operations are mixed. But it's really unacceptable for the platform to unilaterally operate without a word. Consumers should at least have the right to know and the right to choose - whether to continue waiting, exchange, or refund, rather than being "refunded" without knowing. The platform's use of "automatic refunds" instead of communication and machine language to appease demands is essentially transferring service costs to consumers and ignoring their right to choose. In fact, some platforms have already made attempts to show more respect for users. Meituan, JD.com and other platforms provide three options when placing orders: "Contact me by phone in case of out of stock", "Refund the out of stock item, and continue shipping other items", and "Cancel the order directly if there is out of stock", returning the choice to the consumer. These examples illustrate that technology is not the bottleneck, service awareness is the key. Billions of subsidies may produce impressive order data, but we still need to gradually fill in the gaps in service details. Compared to the 'disappearing cake', the 'disappearing human customer service' is more worrying. According to data from the State Administration for Market Regulation, in 2024, there were nearly 7000 complaints related to "intelligent customer service" in e-commerce after-sales complaints, a year-on-year increase of 56.3%. Consumers generally reported that "intelligent customer service" answered questions incorrectly and had difficulty contacting manual customer service, resulting in low communication efficiency and seriously affecting the consumer experience. Behind the failure of intelligent customer service is a shrewd account: AI has low cost, can work 24/7, and can also process requests in batches. But the ultimate pursuit of efficiency should not come at the expense of sacrificing consumer experience. At present, most AI customer service representatives still rely on keyword matching and fixed language, and if the problem is slightly more complicated, they will be confused and can only use standard language such as "thank you for feedback" to deal with it. The more prominent contradiction is that the path of transferring manual customer service and the waiting time are almost entirely decided by the enterprise. Many platforms deliberately set up lengthy processes to indirectly prevent users from finding real customer service. This is not a problem with the technology itself, but a deviation from the service concept. On the track of instant retail, when "half-hour delivery" becomes a standard in the industry and companies cheer for billion level orders, should we turn back and ask: Have users really been well served? Last week, the "three brothers" of food delivery all released their financial reports, and although the losses continued, they all expressed their intention to continue increasing subsidies, fighting big wars, and seizing the market without exception. In this fierce competition of "burning money for growth", we need to return to the original intention of instant retail: to enable people to obtain what they need faster and more conveniently. Relying on corporate self-discipline is far from enough to solve these problems. The current frequent chaos in intelligent customer service is partly due to the lag in regulation and industry standards. We hope that relevant departments can quickly introduce intelligent customer service application standards, clarify response standards for transferring manual services, and provide specific details for protecting users' right to know, in order to regulate the abuse of technological advantages and neglect of user rights by enterprises through institutional constraints. Ultimately, if efficiency cannot serve people, no matter how high the order volume is, loyalty cannot be built up, and no matter how intelligent the algorithm is, trust cannot be calculated. The outcome of the food delivery battle ultimately depends on people's attitudes. After all, every 'disappearing cake' may receive a negative review; Every 'disappearing customer service representative' may lose a user forever. (New Society)