While your direct report's intentions to act on the feedback are commendable, it may be more appropriate for them to craft a personalized response that directly addresses the salesperson's specific concerns and demonstrates a sincere commitment to improvement. This approach can help foster trust, build stronger relationships, and show that the feedback is being taken seriously.

In summary, while ChatGPT can be a useful tool in certain situations, it is essential to consider the context and the potential impact on interpersonal relationships. In sensitive situations like addressing negative feedback, a personalized, human-crafted response may be more effective in demonstrating genuine care and commitment to resolving the issue at hand.

That’s doubly true when delivering negative feedback. But this reads like the salesperson’s feedback was in an email because the response was written and the OP read the response.

In addition if you have a beef with someone, it is good manners to address it directly. Not by talking to their boss.

The salesperson is the one creating bad relationships. Not just with the report but also making work for the OP instead of foregoing asshole behavior.

That said, for technical issues I will sometimes include clearly labeled ChatGPT output that suggests possible causes, things to try, etc. This doesn't feel much different that including a bunch of potentially relevant links from e.g. stack overflow or GitHub issues, which I also do frequently.

Maybe it's ok to reply with something like "Here are my thoughts... [your take], and by the way I asked ChatGPT about this to get another perspective, and here's the output:..." You just shouldn't try to pass off ChatGPT output as a valid reply unedited and without context.

If someone did that to me they would end up on my shit list and it would take them along time to find their way off of it. It would speak to their character in my book. I’d read it as, they don’t care, they have poor judgement, and will take any shortcut they can, regardless of the potential for negative impact.

So, I think it’s legitimate to use these tools in personal and professional communications, with the caveat that we should review and revise the output.

What you both want, I think, is a form letter. I say that as one of the exceedingly apparent aspects of a form letter, is its topical nature, but while still being generic.

A form letter may answer questions in detail, or reply with helpful info, but knowing that the form letter is not written for, or specific to the person is helpful.

Part of the reason why, is if the form letter doesn't cut it, then the person knows they have more recourse, and can reply akin to "I need more personalized care".

You might obtain the same effect by asking chatgpt to make a form like letter, or prefacing the response by saying it was AI assisted/generated.

So I say no, unless disclosed.

And really, if a company is trying to hide that it is AI assisted, maybe that's a clue too?

Some context: I get bothered by recruiters-a-many, and it's bothersome because many have absolutely no idea what they are doing. Or they just fish, blast 1000 people without caring.

Or, they are clearly trying to steal identities.

Anyhow, I have 3 or 4 draft emails which are a few paragraphs long, and basically said "are you sure?" in different ways. I have improved them over the years.

If they then reply in a sensible way? Then I respond for real.

Consider the possibility that the accused has social skills challenges and was making an honest effort to communicate effectively.

I have a Raycast extension that takes highlighted text as input and runs it through ChatGPT 4 Turbo to simplify, correct, and improve my writing.

In fact, I just ran it on this comment.

You're right. The context can make a lot of difference. I purposely shared the situation in a more generic way to receive less biased responses and help me ponder.

The replies I've received from this thread have been really helpful for me to determine how to handle this and similar situations fairly.

Thanks for your input!

> You're allowing sales people to give negative feedback to your people? Aka you're letting the sales person manage your people for you? You're allowing them to damage your team's morale?

Our company promotes a culture of open feedback within all teams. The sales team often seeks support from our tech team to address technical queries from potential customers. We have a process in place to ensure all communication with the tech team goes through a queue to be addressed orderly.

Of course, what ever the bot generated communicates to the human who received that message (and was able to discern the "voice" of the LLM), without words, that the receiver didn't think of it as high enough priority to actually engage in a conversation. The LLM might have gone through the motions, but why on earth would that salesperson think that your report (to whom the feedback was directed) actually means what stochastic parrot barfed out. Frankly, I would also assume the opposite. Using a GenAI communicates, you are not worthy of my precious keystrokes. Or as McLuhan said: The medium is the message.

Using an LLM in the way he did gives a signal that he does not really care.

If the salesperson provided negative feedback by email instead of in realtime with their voice, ChatGPT is not particularly rude.

Email is case-making via putting-it-in-writing. ChatGPT is a reasonable means of adding to the written record.

And to be clear, the salesperson is case-making. That's why they escalated to you. It's primadrama not teamwork. Good luck.