3 ms·

Just what consumers have been clamoring to do: talk to more customer service robots.

erichurkman 7y ago
Phone robots are awful. Just this morning I had to call Fidelity, and their phone robot made me type out my 50 character randomly-generated password on a 10 key. It then asked me to state my question, it guessed wrong, and the support agent had to re-ID me anyway just to transfer me to _another_ phone robot that again requested me to enter my password on a 10 key phone. If GOOG can actually make this process better (like in their example, if they could have texted me the buried link on fidelity.com that I could do what I wanted to do) than I'm stoked. Less stoked since this seems like a weird product for Google to build, and a prime product for them to try & shut down 18 months from now.
- jkestelyn 7y ago
  They don't have to be awful; most of them are just poorly designed. Another Area 120 startup, Chatbase, is a service for designing voice bots that are much smarter and versatile than the norm by anticipating what questions people ask based on precedent (and all the different ways they ask them). Most voice bots can't do that. [Disclaimer: I work on the Chatbase team]
bdcravens 7y ago
A feature that I've yet seen implemented: white-listing numbers to bypass the robot
- reaperducer 7y ago
  Bank of America seems to do this somewhat. If I call from the phone that's connected to my Bank of America account, I can access my account with just a four-digit number. If I call from another phone, I have to go through the full user verification.
  - mcny 7y ago
    Can it tell the difference between calling from your phone as opposed to calling from your Amazon Alexa device if you have one? I mean how does it handle spoofing?
- LostJourneyman 7y ago
  Disclaimer: I'm a telephony engineer, and while I understand and will below present the motivations and logic of enterprise-level companies, I don't always agree with it. On the enterprise level, this is actually pretty common. I've personally implemented this several dozen times for VIP lines. For enterprises, though, it's important to understand that almost anything that happens in a call center is a cost to the company and rarely makes revenue. The company sees the call center, often, as a necessary evil. Having customers that could potentially have figured it out themselves talk to a human is really just taking time away from agents helping someone who couldn't "self-serve". You only really see this feature in cases where is almost always worth it for the company to have someone talking to an agent immediately.
- iancarroll 7y ago
  Delta (and presumably most airlines) do this for you once you have elite status. You no longer have to go through the prompts and are just routed to a human.

Phone robots are awful. Just this morning I had to call Fidelity, and their phone robot made me type out my 50 character randomly-generated password on a 10 key. It then asked me to state my question, it guessed wrong, and the support agent had to re-ID me anyway just to transfer me to _another_ phone robot that again requested me to enter my password on a 10 key phone. If GOOG can actually make this process better (like in their example, if they could have texted me the buried link on fidelity.com that I could do what I wanted to do) than I'm stoked. Less stoked since this seems like a weird product for Google to build, and a prime product for them to try & shut down 18 months from now.

jkestelyn 7y ago
They don't have to be awful; most of them are just poorly designed. Another Area 120 startup, Chatbase, is a service for designing voice bots that are much smarter and versatile than the norm by anticipating what questions people ask based on precedent (and all the different ways they ask them). Most voice bots can't do that. [Disclaimer: I work on the Chatbase team]

bdcravens 7y ago

A feature that I've yet seen implemented: white-listing numbers to bypass the robot

reaperducer 7y ago
Bank of America seems to do this somewhat. If I call from the phone that's connected to my Bank of America account, I can access my account with just a four-digit number. If I call from another phone, I have to go through the full user verification.
- mcny 7y ago
  Can it tell the difference between calling from your phone as opposed to calling from your Amazon Alexa device if you have one? I mean how does it handle spoofing?
LostJourneyman 7y ago
Disclaimer: I'm a telephony engineer, and while I understand and will below present the motivations and logic of enterprise-level companies, I don't always agree with it. On the enterprise level, this is actually pretty common. I've personally implemented this several dozen times for VIP lines. For enterprises, though, it's important to understand that almost anything that happens in a call center is a cost to the company and rarely makes revenue. The company sees the call center, often, as a necessary evil. Having customers that could potentially have figured it out themselves talk to a human is really just taking time away from agents helping someone who couldn't "self-serve". You only really see this feature in cases where is almost always worth it for the company to have someone talking to an agent immediately.
iancarroll 7y ago
Delta (and presumably most airlines) do this for you once you have elite status. You no longer have to go through the prompts and are just routed to a human.