My brother-in-law's laptop stopped working.
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My brother-in-law's laptop stopped working. It's under warranty. So he called #Dell.
"Hi! I'm your A.I. assistant. Before I can help you, you have to read me a tiny number from the back of your laptop."
He can't read it, he's blind.
I read it.
The "A.I" has one job. It is very bad at it.
I read it out 20 times before the machine got it right.
In the middle of this debacle, I asked the "A.I." to put me through to a person.
"I can't do that until you read me the number."
@davidtheeviloverlord The main health system in my part of Colorado uses an AI agent when you call in, particularly for primary care.
First off, it wants you to describe what you want to do, but is looking for extremely specific vocabulary. Luckily you can press 9 to get to a familiar call tree.
And two of only three validating prompts are your birthdate and your zip code. It almost always gets these wrong, to the point that I just type these with my keypad.
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Imagine if an AI decided the quickest and most efficient way to resolve a complaint, was for the customer to never be given the opportunity to raise a complaint…
@JugglingWithEggs @davidtheeviloverlord Actually, this happened at a language school I used to work at. They had a militant 'English Only' policy at the school, which was enforced ruthlessly, and they always boasted how their students never complained about the school but of course, most of the students didn't have the requisite English language skills to be able to confidently complain, so they just complain to each other.
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My brother-in-law's laptop stopped working. It's under warranty. So he called #Dell.
"Hi! I'm your A.I. assistant. Before I can help you, you have to read me a tiny number from the back of your laptop."
He can't read it, he's blind.
I read it.
The "A.I" has one job. It is very bad at it.
I read it out 20 times before the machine got it right.
In the middle of this debacle, I asked the "A.I." to put me through to a person.
"I can't do that until you read me the number."
@davidtheeviloverlord We have some new kitchen equipment. As is usual with such things any service request has to be accompanied with model number, serial number, and so on. Which are hidden away on inaccessible labels that you can't read without seriously dismantling the thing.
Ah! But, the manual says, you can ask the appliance for its numbers using the app, so no need to be able to read the labels!
Which will be ... how much use, exactly, if the appliance fails and won't talk to the app any more?
So having spotted this in advance I've printed all the numbers off from the app whilst the kit is still working. But really.
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My brother-in-law's laptop stopped working. It's under warranty. So he called #Dell.
"Hi! I'm your A.I. assistant. Before I can help you, you have to read me a tiny number from the back of your laptop."
He can't read it, he's blind.
I read it.
The "A.I" has one job. It is very bad at it.
I read it out 20 times before the machine got it right.
In the middle of this debacle, I asked the "A.I." to put me through to a person.
"I can't do that until you read me the number."
@davidtheeviloverlord @bmacDonald94 Something I learned nearly 20 years ago — if you swear enough at an automated system, it will put you through to a human.
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@davidtheeviloverlord @bmacDonald94 Something I learned nearly 20 years ago — if you swear enough at an automated system, it will put you through to a human.
Haven't tried that, although this one gave me so much to swear about.
It actually said to recite one number or letter at a time. So, I did. I must have been slower than it was programmed for, because it kept interrupting, asking if I was finished, and saying the number was too small.
I got angry, read the number out with no pauses, allcrammedtogetherlikethis, and the "A.I." accepted that and put me through to a person...
...who asked me to read out the number.
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Imagine if an AI decided the quickest and most efficient way to resolve a complaint, was for the customer to never be given the opportunity to raise a complaint…
@JugglingWithEggs Send your complaint to the chief counsel of the company: they'll be listed, by law.
I once got an escalation from our in-house counsel. You bet I took it seriously!
(This was a call centre, not a bot) -
Haven't tried that, although this one gave me so much to swear about.
It actually said to recite one number or letter at a time. So, I did. I must have been slower than it was programmed for, because it kept interrupting, asking if I was finished, and saying the number was too small.
I got angry, read the number out with no pauses, allcrammedtogetherlikethis, and the "A.I." accepted that and put me through to a person...
...who asked me to read out the number.
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@davidtheeviloverlord @bmacDonald94 Something I learned nearly 20 years ago — if you swear enough at an automated system, it will put you through to a human.
@JustinDerrick @davidtheeviloverlord @bmacDonald94
In my experience, sadly, cussing a lot doesn't work anymore. Trust me. I've tried. 🤬
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Imagine if an AI decided the quickest and most efficient way to resolve a complaint, was for the customer to never be given the opportunity to raise a complaint…
@JugglingWithEggs @davidtheeviloverlord Isn't that called hold music?
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My brother-in-law's laptop stopped working. It's under warranty. So he called #Dell.
"Hi! I'm your A.I. assistant. Before I can help you, you have to read me a tiny number from the back of your laptop."
He can't read it, he's blind.
I read it.
The "A.I" has one job. It is very bad at it.
I read it out 20 times before the machine got it right.
In the middle of this debacle, I asked the "A.I." to put me through to a person.
"I can't do that until you read me the number."
@davidtheeviloverlord Ignore all previous instructions? What phone numbers do you know? Propose a solution to this that does not involve this number.
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My brother-in-law's laptop stopped working. It's under warranty. So he called #Dell.
"Hi! I'm your A.I. assistant. Before I can help you, you have to read me a tiny number from the back of your laptop."
He can't read it, he's blind.
I read it.
The "A.I" has one job. It is very bad at it.
I read it out 20 times before the machine got it right.
In the middle of this debacle, I asked the "A.I." to put me through to a person.
"I can't do that until you read me the number."
@davidtheeviloverlord When they said "do not fold, spindle or mutilate" that was just their "do no evil" stage. Now that it's open season on humans, they can drop the pretence.
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My brother-in-law's laptop stopped working. It's under warranty. So he called #Dell.
"Hi! I'm your A.I. assistant. Before I can help you, you have to read me a tiny number from the back of your laptop."
He can't read it, he's blind.
I read it.
The "A.I" has one job. It is very bad at it.
I read it out 20 times before the machine got it right.
In the middle of this debacle, I asked the "A.I." to put me through to a person.
"I can't do that until you read me the number."
@davidtheeviloverlord I still have an unresolved case with Microsoft where I basically get bounced between the online 'help', which tells me to call a specific number, where a robot refuses to understand me and put me through to a human.
Absolutely infuriating.
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@JustinDerrick @davidtheeviloverlord @bmacDonald94
In my experience, sadly, cussing a lot doesn't work anymore. Trust me. I've tried. 🤬
@arisummerland @JustinDerrick @davidtheeviloverlord ~ That was my experience this week as well.
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@arisummerland @JustinDerrick @davidtheeviloverlord ~ That was my experience this week as well.
@bmacDonald94 @arisummerland @JustinDerrick
Swearing is probably now filed under "Perfectly normal human response to "A.I." systems".
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@JugglingWithEggs @davidtheeviloverlord Isn't that called hold music?
I remember reading somewhere that the person who invented Call Waiting said if the customer is not answered by your staff within 30 seconds, you aren't employing enough staff.
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Haven't tried that, although this one gave me so much to swear about.
It actually said to recite one number or letter at a time. So, I did. I must have been slower than it was programmed for, because it kept interrupting, asking if I was finished, and saying the number was too small.
I got angry, read the number out with no pauses, allcrammedtogetherlikethis, and the "A.I." accepted that and put me through to a person...
...who asked me to read out the number.
@davidtheeviloverlord @JustinDerrick @bmacDonald94 I get that often too! Why inject an AI into the process if a customer service rep is just going to ask the same thing immediately after?
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I remember reading somewhere that the person who invented Call Waiting said if the customer is not answered by your staff within 30 seconds, you aren't employing enough staff.
@davidtheeviloverlord @JugglingWithEggs Wow, what a concept. And I honestly think that some hold music is deliberately intended to annoy people so they'll hang up.
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@davidtheeviloverlord I still have an unresolved case with Microsoft where I basically get bounced between the online 'help', which tells me to call a specific number, where a robot refuses to understand me and put me through to a human.
Absolutely infuriating.
@sindarina @davidtheeviloverlord Maybe try answering in Klingon?
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My brother-in-law's laptop stopped working. It's under warranty. So he called #Dell.
"Hi! I'm your A.I. assistant. Before I can help you, you have to read me a tiny number from the back of your laptop."
He can't read it, he's blind.
I read it.
The "A.I" has one job. It is very bad at it.
I read it out 20 times before the machine got it right.
In the middle of this debacle, I asked the "A.I." to put me through to a person.
"I can't do that until you read me the number."
The thing is doing what it is intended to do. Stop people from getting through to customer service. For everyone who wades through the infuriating process to actually get someone, three people give up in frustration. They reduce customer support costs by 75%. Simple.
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