from the I am-sorry-I-can’t-do-that,-Dave dept
One recurring theme of our head-first rushed adoption of “AI” is that half-cooked automation routinely displays the usually shitty natures of the businesses or people putting in it.
Medical insurance corporations with a historical past of being crooks implement Medicare rejection AI with a 90% error charge. Incompetent media firm executives implement half-cooked “AI” that plagiarizes, undercuts labor, and makes fixed errors. Bizarre anti-science zealots who’re routinely filled with shit wind up issuing authorities reviews filled with absolute anti-science bullshit. Curious!
Over in telecom, Verizon has carried out automation in its buyer assist techniques, and, as soon as once more, it instantly displays Verizon’s lengthy historical past of horrible customer support, bizarre upcharges, and simply usually being curiously horrible at math. The corporate’s new “Private Shopper” AI assistant is ruffling buyer feathers as a result of it routinely provides undesirable options and continuously tries to tear prospects off.
Reddit is filled with posts like this one the place customers attempting to make primary adjustments to their account utilizing the device routinely discover themselves instantly paying an arm and a leg for all kinds of companies they neither needed nor requested for:
“I went to the Verizon retailer so as to add a line and get a watch. I’m taking a look at my Verizon account and simply observed that the individual helping me added the 100GB of sizzling spot add on, Netflix & IMAX and insurance coverage which I by no means requested for. All I needed was the watch. I anticipated my invoice to be $170-$180 however it’s $261 with all these add ons that I by no means requested for.”
Launched final vacation season, Verizon insisted the brand new AI assistant would deliver extra pleasure and fewer stress to the expertise with the telecom. Nevertheless it’s clear that, in conventional Verizon trend, the AI is being formed to mirror Verizon’s infinite efforts to upsell prospects to costlier plans, add-ons, and companies. Even Verizon reps say they’re irritated with the system, which makes their jobs tougher:
“Anybody else who works for Verizon having points with “Private Shopper”?
I’m oblique and tried to position an order for an iPad yesterday, one thing that usually would take me like 5 minutes ended up being like 30 as a result of I’m continuously combating private shopper wanting so as to add perks. Makes omni completely canine shit to make use of now.”
So automation that’s purported to make prospects’ and reps’ lives simpler is definitely making each experiences worse, and driving irritated prospects over to different wi-fi suppliers. Ironic that know-how that’s purported to revolutionize issues appears to be merely supercharging many corporations’ worst habits, including new layers of annoyance and complexity.
Possibly Verizon ought to have spent much less time kissing Trump’s ass to achieve merger approval and extra time nice tuning their AI assistants.
Filed Beneath: 5g, ai, assistant, customer support, telecom, wi-fi
Firms: verizon
