from the I’m-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 reflects the often shitty natures of the companies or individuals installing it.
Health insurance companies with a history of being crooks implement Medicare rejection AI with a 90% error rate. Incompetent media company executives implement half-cooked “AI” that plagiarizes, undercuts labor, and makes constant mistakes. Weird anti-science zealots who are routinely full of shit wind up issuing government reports full of absolute anti-science bullshit. Curious!
Over in telecom, Verizon has implemented automation in its customer support systems, and, once again, it directly reflects Verizon’s long history of terrible customer service, weird upcharges, and just generally being curiously terrible at math. The company’s new “Personal Shopper” AI assistant is ruffling customer feathers because it routinely adds unwanted features and constantly tries to rip customers off.
Reddit is full of posts like this one where users trying to make basic changes to their account using the tool routinely find themselves suddenly paying an arm and a leg for all sorts of services they neither wanted nor asked for:
“I went to the Verizon store to add a line and get a watch. I’m looking at my Verizon account and just noticed that the person assisting me added the 100GB of hot spot add on, Netflix & IMAX and insurance which I never asked for. All I wanted was the watch. I expected my bill to be $170-$180 but it’s $261 with all these add ons that I never asked for.”
Introduced last holiday season, Verizon insisted the new AI assistant would bring more joy and less stress to the experience with the telecom. But it’s clear that, in traditional Verizon fashion, the AI is being shaped to reflect Verizon’s endless efforts to upsell customers to more expensive plans, add-ons, and services. Even Verizon reps say they’re annoyed with the system, which makes their jobs harder:
“Anyone else who works for Verizon having issues with “Personal Shopper”?
I’m indirect and tried to place an order for an iPad yesterday, something that normally would take me like 5 minutes ended up being like 30 because I’m constantly fighting personal shopper wanting to add perks. Makes omni absolutely dog shit to use now.”
So automation that’s supposed to make customers’ and reps’ lives easier is actually making both experiences worse, and driving annoyed customers over to other wireless providers. Ironic that technology that’s supposed to revolutionize things seems to be simply supercharging many companies’ worst habits, adding new layers of annoyance and complexity.
Maybe Verizon should have spent less time kissing Trump’s ass to gain merger approval and more time fine tuning their AI assistants.
Filed Under: 5g, ai, assistant, customer service, telecom, wireless
Companies: verizon
