World's Rudest Robot Set To Simulate the Fury of Call Center Customers 150
An anonymous reader writes: A New Zealand-based company called Touchpoint Group has unveiled the world's angriest robot, which is designed to help train call center employees in the art of dealing with frustrated customers. The project, named Radiant, will involve one of Australia's biggest banks, which is providing researchers with recordings of real-life interactions with customers. Once finished Radiant will simulate hundreds of millions of angry customer interactions, helping companies better understand what triggers heated calls.
Oh! (Score:3, Funny)
I definitely want to set that thing loose on Slashdot!
Re:Oh! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Oh! (Score:5, Funny)
Me, I'm waiting for the consumer edition.
It's only fair that we use our own robots, to get through their robots, and to speak to their customer service representatives (who may not be robots themselves, but who may act like robots anyway).
"Please cancel my Comcast subscription.", "By the way, I'm recording this phone conversation for proof that I've actually cancelled my Comcast subscription. So let me ask again, please cancel my Comcast subscription.", "I don't care about any of that, please cancel my comcast subscription. ", "What was your name and employee number again? Thank you 'John, I can't give you my last name because of company policy'. Despite the fact that I've given you my social security number, my address, my birthdate, the maiden name of my mother. Once again, please cancel my comcast subscription. ", "No, I don't want to be transferred to your retention specialist. Hello, hello..."
Busy signal...
"Is anyone there? Fuck all of you!! I just want to cancel my Comcast subscription!!"
Busy signal...
"I'm just a robot. I can do this all day. Please cancel my Comcast subscription!!"
Click. The Comcast system has just hung up the phone.
My robot redialing...
Busy signal...
My robot redialing...
Busy signal...
enter, Judge Judy (Score:3)
... and hook it up with the Judge Judy sound board.
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/sou... [ebaumsworld.com]
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Cortana would be ideal for that if only it can be made to do sequential steps. Currently it's one instruction only.
"Cortana, phone xxx call centre, authenticate me and let me know when you hear "How can I help you today?"
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Re:Oh! (Score:4, Interesting)
Why? Telemarketers are fun! I have started my personal little statistics program that checks the habits and living situation of telemarketing agents. The results so far (for the parties interested):
Average willingness to answer questions:
Questions before asking why those questions: 3.4
Questions before refusing to answer any more questions: 5.1
Questions before getting rude: 6.3
Questions before hanging up: 6.3+1 (oddly, they reliably hang up exactly one question after becoming abusive).
Personally, I find it amazing how long they try to return the conversation to their track before noticing that they're being trolled. Interesting also the deviation. Telemarketers either refuse to answer questions altogether or they are really desperate for you to not hang up so they play along hoping for a tit-for-tat.
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no you don't! have you thought about what a horrible idea that is? of course you haven't, because you need a brain to think!
and what the fuck is wrong with YELLING, SLASHDOT FILTER!??!!?
Why not just intern at Comcast for a while? (Score:1)
That will provide them with the angriest and most justified to be angry customers in the world.
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It's more likely Comcast is going to look at hiring the rude robot to *replace* their rude, useless call center people.
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Or even better, set it loose on the various states' Attorney General's offices, regarding the problems they're having with their Comcast service.
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I sure hope I'm getting residuals for this. I'm pretty sure my voice is on these recordings.
And the answer is... (Score:5, Funny)
What makes the callers angriest? Call center employees who act like robots.
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Spending 40 minutes on hold and having to talk to someone who has no power to do anything for you! Bonus points if they tell you to call back during normal business hours!
Another good one is being transferred around to different departments until someone hangs up on you.
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...being told to call around to different departments until you end up with the person you spoke to originally
Re:And the answer is... (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be amusing to hook the angry robot up to one of those online automatic assistants.
Re:And the answer is... (Score:5, Funny)
It would be amusing to hook the angry robot up to one of those online automatic assistants.
You want Skynet? Because that's how you get Skynet!
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A funny mash-up reply... and I'm out of mod points today.
Mod parent funny!
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Just hook it up to itself, like a digital centipede.
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Or call center employees who obviously have no ability to fix a situation, assuming they even understand the problems in the first place. Call centers exist purely to run interference for the people in charge.
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What makes call center employees act like robots? Call center clients who give us ineffective reaching instructions and inflexible scripts. When an agents tries to do the right thing, then either sales or customer service will get rude, all-caps emails and calls at all hours of the night threatening to go off service. Or perhaps the agent will get ahold of somebody who can do something only to be subjected to an obscene torrent of insults.
When I used to be on the call floor, I received multiple death thr
Re:And the answer is... (Score:4, Insightful)
What makes the callers angriest? Call center employees who act like robots.
Also, hearing "We are receiving higher than usual call volume..." every single time you call anywhere for any reason. Nothing says "We are lying incompetents" more clearly.
Impressive... (Score:5, Insightful)
People fucking hate call centers because they have to traverse some hellish phone tree, wait too long to talk to a representative who is generally underinformed and insufficiently empowered to actually do anything about the problem. In some cases the rep is even required by company policy to be actively unhelpful, attempt upsells, and the like. Plus, of course, nobody calls phone support when things are working properly, so you start out with a somewhat skewed sample of people who are having issues of one kind or another; not so much happy people just looking to transact.
What do they want? The magic fancy AI to tell them how to keep customers from being pissed off because of bad service without actually making service better? The one weird trick to making someone feel calm about being told that the problem cannot be fixed? A deeper understanding of why listening to hold music and inane recordings about how much we care about your call for half an hour is obnoxious?
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The fact the corporate brass are so not getting the issue that they commissioned this project is, itself, a symptom of exactly the problem they want to study. This is some meta level stupid.
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The fact the corporate brass are so not getting the issue that they commissioned this project is, itself, a symptom of exactly the problem they want to study.
You are making the unwarranted assumption that it is cheaper to provide good service than to provide bad service and train employees to deal with the blowback. I see no reason to believe that is true. Sure, for some businesses, providing good service pays off, but there are certain industries, including cellphone service, cable service, and health insurance, where all of the companies use the "crappy service" model. I don't think that would happen if that strategy didn't maximize profits.
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I generally just drop shitty companies. It's worked great for me so far. I am fortunate that my internet provider is actually very good. A little pricey but I'll take that over cheap and shitty. If they sucked I'd have a hard time replacing them. Everyone else though is very expendable.
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I generally just drop shitty companies. It's worked great for me so far.
If you throw them instead you won't get shit on your shoes and the floor
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Excellent point.
Re:Impressive... (Score:4, Insightful)
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This...
But people are half of the problem. They want champagne service at beer prices.
My car insurance is with RAC here in Western Australia. They aren't the cheapest but they have a local call centre that operates on Western Australian time, well trained staff and I've
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Cheap and good can be done together. I am in upstate New York and my car is insured with GEICO. I switched to them for the reason they typically advertise: it's cheaper. The delightful surprise is that their customer service people are super-polite, sufficiently trained, sufficiently empowered, and on the two occasions when I have filed a claim with them, they have been fast about getting things back in order.
On a side-note, I've been to the Philippines. I think their English is more EN_ca than EN_us.
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How to avoid the tech support script runaround? The code word is "Shibboleet." [xkcd.com]
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Just be sure you pronounce it correctly. [kingjamesbibleonline.org]
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At least link to something that is at least a little bit closer to reality [wikipedia.org]. The term has since way outpaced that use and it's quite interesting how it's become a way for various communities to check whether someone is "one of us".
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A deeper understanding of why listening to hold music and inane recordings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Way back in 2007 I bought a Microsoft bluetooth keyboard and mouse to replace my Logitech that kept dropping connection and "sticky key"ing (connection drop, last key hit was repeated until I could reconnect). For some reason, the driver install would complete, but it wouldn't actually pick up the keyboard and mouse. Then I read it needed Windows installer 3.0 (I think?), but I had 2.something. Uninstall/reinstall a few times, nothing. So I call tech su
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Logitech is a decent company. You don't get that level of support everywhere.
And Windows installer going TU is going to be difficult to fix in any case. It doesn't happen often and reinstalling Windows seems like a good solution to fix a part of the Windows OS. Since it doesn't happen often I can't imagine there being a decent business case for making a separate windows installer installer beyond re-installing the OS. There will always be edge cases.
Now for why Windows STILL does not make separate data and
Heated calls? (Score:1)
"helping companies better understand what triggers heated calls"
helping companies better understand what triggers heated calls?
ARE THEY MORONS?!?
Heated Calls? (Score:1)
I thought it was obvious what generated heated calls. Companies could just listen to their customers and then they would know.
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I thought it was obvious what generated heated calls. Companies could just listen to their customers and then they would know.
Listen to our customers? What a radical idea - you're fired!
Lies (Score:1)
Bollocks, it'll be used to better understand how to pacify and palm off heated calls.
Incompetent staff with no authority. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not hard to answer. Nobody wants to spend hours on the phone with somebody who:
Modern call centres appear to be designed specifically to infuriate people by politely wasting their time without solving any problems.
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That's not hard to answer. Nobody wants to spend hours on the phone with somebody who:
Modern call centres appear to be designed specifically to infuriate people by politely wasting their time without solving any problems.
No. No. No. The purpose of the modern call center is to "solve" customer problems in the most cost efficient manner. If the customer goes away and keeps paying without the company needing to spend resources to fix something, that is a good result. It gets even better if this can be accomplished while paying the customer service rep as little as possible.
It is, of course, a delicate balancing act. Go too cheap and you lose customers. Spend too much and it cuts into the bottom line. The robot training
Re:Incompetent staff with no authority. (Score:5, Funny)
It's worked so far for the world's oldest profession...
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Well, but only because getting screwed is what the customer wants. The current call center is only a success for customers with a serious masochistic tendency. And for that it's fairly badly marketed because not only is that market rather small but also usually willing to pay way more for the abuse.
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The purpose of the modern call center is to "solve" customer problems in the most cost efficient manner.
Nope the purpose of the modern call center is to enhance the resume of the manager who runs it. The modern call center is just about always associated with a monopolistic venture with captive customers, so their happiness of the customers and the number of complaints in the queue are simply irrelevant numbers ignored by everyone.
Fuck this robot, stealing my job! (Score:1)
I'd do it for HALF the fucking money and with TWICE the rudeness, but do these boffins fucking even ask? IDIOTS.
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i prefer money that isn't fucking, you don't have to wipe it off
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Be abusive and being paid for it? Did Simon Cowell quit and they're now auditioning for his replacement?
Why even have a call center? (Score:2)
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Every call center I've ever encountered is designed to ask you if you power cycled your thing
Yeah, I got that when I called the bakery about the missing raisins in my raisin bread. They asked me to power cycle the loaf and cut another slice.
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http://www.thefedoranerd.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Hello-IT-Have.jpg
So, let me get this straight. (Score:2)
Sooner or later these phone line workers are going to initiate a class action law suit for permanently damaging their emotional selves and making them insensitive to anger they h
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They will train more low wage workers
My guess would be *replace* low wage workers once the robot is sufficiently obnoxious.
Ug, this sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Why bother? (Score:2)
They could have just called my wife.
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what should they call your wife?
Bender? (Score:3)
Bender, is that you?
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Nah man, it's me, Roberto. You remember me, don't you man? I know where you live!
Apple has this down... (Score:3, Insightful)
The "Genius Bar" (is that still around?) never gave anyone answers. They just gave you tons of dripping empathy, but no help.
"Yes, I can understand completely how frustrated you must feel; however, Apple doesn't feel that your computer not working is a serious enough issue for us to warrant talking to anyone else in the company who cares or will listen. Thank you and have a wonderful day. Would you like to buy this other shiny piece of matching crap over here that doesn't work either?"
Which bank? (Score:1)
Gotta be Westpac. And they wouldn't need 'angry customer' training if they didn't treat their customers like dicks with open wallets.
Perfect fit (Score:2)
Why not use Comcast's excess customer calls? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Comcast-A-Tron
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Turing test (Score:2)
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Almost. It was doing fine until it told the service rep to kiss its shiny metal ass.
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can the service rep pass or administer the turing test?
I bet according to the script he can't do either.
which is why the callers are frustrated.
Source code to robot (Score:3)
helping companies better understand what triggers heated calls.
#include <stdio.h>
main()
{
say("Your service fails intermittently.");
say("Your service costs too much relative to similar services in other developed nations.");
say("You don't test your services thoroughly before and while providing them to us.");
say("You don't staff your call centers adequately.");
say("When presented with reasonable customer complaints, your call center employees aren't empowered to alter policy appropriately.");
say("Your corporate governance is ethically lacking.");
}
why? (Score:2)
Why do we want to train customer service representatives to be angry and rude? Can't they learn how to do that on the job?
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where do you find these special human beings who are not angry and rude to begin with?
Hiring climate (Score:2)
The funny thing is, with unemployment so high, and call centre work not being intrinsically difficult, companies can hire motivated, people-oriented workers with excellent listening and problem-solving skills and super-friendly personalities. So they do. But the job turns them into the call centre workers we talk to when we call.
That says a lot about the employer.
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misses the point (Score:1)
"... helping companies better understand what triggers heated calls."
No it doesn't. A robot pre-programmed for being angry can only help companies understand the best ways to endure / pacify angry callers.
Yay for treating the symptoms of bad customer service without even attempting to touch the cause.
No Shit (Score:1)
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why customers were angry to begin with
unless you've been living under a rock or in a cave, you've undoubtedly made some sort of financial transaction where you felt like you got ripped off. how did that feel to you? so are you a special different kind of human or maybe perhaps you might be able to comprehend that these people feel like you did. do you need a manual or a book to explain the human experience?
a soothing balm for the drones (Score:2)
these call centers are fronting for operations that could care less about whether their customers are angry or happy. just about every big operation these days is a monopoly, and the customers are going nowhere. they don't need to solve customer problems or soothe the raging callers. the only real motivation is to talk the customer out of more money.
You don't need a robot (Score:3)
Seriously, people get pissed when you:
1) don't get what they paid for
2) get lied to
3) have to put up with clueless cue-card-reading tech support
4) have to wait inordinately long periods of time to talk to someone
Want happier customers? Don't fuck them around. If mistakes are made, own up to it and make it right. Above all, train your staff well so they actually understand what they're supporting.
Bloody obvious! (Score:3)
Dealing with banks is what triggers heated calls. I should have thought any adult who has ever had to deal with an bank knows that. I have had more intelligent conversations with parrots than with banks.
OK, I live in the UK, but banks are banks.
Old idea (Score:2)
The white box is a, rather sarcastic, AI inside an SGI O2 computer box.
Waste of time and money. (Score:2)
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They've already called me up twice today. Obviously it was just for practice because I already told them I'm not buying any of their shit. And I work for free training these assholes how to deal with cold calls.
Usually I keep them on the line long enough to waste their time, or go to the loo and at least squeeze out a #1 (bonus points for a #2) while I hold the phone near enough to hear it.
"Once finished Radiant will simulate hundreds of (Score:1)
I'll help you cut to the case, it's shitty service and shitty call center reps with no power to do anything helpful. Until you fix that, you're gonna have pissed off customers.
Hey! (Score:2)
Abomination (Score:2)
Having previously worked at a helpdesk I can only say one thing..
they are creating an abomination!
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twenty automated levels before you can speak to a person , hit the wrong option oops have to redial and start again. Then you to valdiate with a person before they will transfer you through to the appeals dept. Where you have to validate again. After 25 attempts the appeals department wont tell you how you appeal .
All for an item the that never arrived because the courrier company delievered it to the wrong house number , wrong street , wrong postcode - but as it was signed for according to ebay it was successfully delivered.
Which is why you pay with a credit card and issue a chargeback at the first sign of bullshit.
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...only to be blacklisted by EBay for such an action and excluded from using them again.
"But you're able to charge back" is a nice slogan, but know that doing so usually means that company you charged back from won't do business with you again.
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Would you really want to do business with the company again at that point, anyway?
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As a buyer, eBay accounts are throwaway.
For things like Steam, where one chargeback could nuke / limit your whole account and the operators ignore all of your rights because "LOL VIDEOGAMES", create individual accounts for individual titles you're unsure about. Alternatively, don't buy from stores with shitty fucking policies.
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Thank you for mentioning how polite we are here in the Shaky Isles.
As my sig shows we are a well-balanced people.
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I actually met an angry New Zealander once. Mind you he wasn't angry at first. I was giving him a lift to work in the mornings and afternoons. It took about 8 days before he grabbed me on the arm, shook it and yelled "THIS IS WHAT GOD'S PRESENCE IS! IT IS REAL. IT ISN"T IMAGINATION!". He had a lot of patience that guy but he eventually broke.
The only other one I met of note was my ex-brother in law's wife who had a large head and was mostly teeth. Her lips didn't cover her gum line and you couldn't help but
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New Zealanders are well balanced with a chip on each shoulder. One represents Australia, the other the rest of the world
So just like Australians then...
(Disclaimer: NZ is one of my favourite places in the world. Australia... not so much)
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We're not angry at the CCAs. You're just the poor grunt that gets to take the bullet, we're actually angry at the idiots that make you do it. Sadly, we can't get through to them. So sadly, you get to get burned.
Believe me if we tell you that if we could skin one of your mangers alive, we would gladly do so. Their only reason for survival is that killing them isn't worth one nanosecond of jail time.
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He'd just take over management and no measurable difference could be noticed.