Robots vs People
I was doing some online banking this morning when I hit a glitch. I’d filled in a form and it would not complete - it kept asking me to tick a box that I’d already ticked. “I’ve already ticked it!” I shouted at the computer, but it ignored my banking rage. Perhaps the problem was caused by my working on a Mac, but I tried both Firefox and Safari browsers and surely in this day and age websites should cater for Mac users?
So I was forced to pick up the phone and speak to a real person. They were friendly enough, but it took much longer over the phone because they had to ask me 20 inane security questions and then put me on hold to crap music while they checked whether they could do what I wanted, and then they had to try and “upsell” me with combos and supersized fries, or the banking equivalent.
It just reinforced my dislike of telephones. My bank is trying to be very touchy-feely at the moment by having “real” people answer the phones, but that doesn’t necessarily improve the experience. Robots remain calm; people get flustered. With robots, I can just press buttons and not have to string entire sentences together. You know where you are with robots, whereas with people the conversation can go in any direction. And in a battle of people vs robots, robots are most likely to win. So why are we trying to oppress them? Now I’m nervous about an uprising.
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Saturday, April 5th, 2008 at 10:00 am
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But then again, robots are also stubborn enough to tell you to tick a box that is already ticked…
April 5th, 2008 at 5:30 pmShona,
I have no problem with talking to people as long as they are reasonably intelligent. It is just the morons that I hate! Give me a person who can actually fix the problem and then I am fine. Let me know that the problem can be fixed again I am fine. If not then I just go up the chain to someone who can fix it.
April 6th, 2008 at 1:48 pmI thought I posted something about robot bloggers here, but I’m not sure. Must be losing losing my mind or something…
April 6th, 2008 at 6:10 pmNothing wrong with people if you pay them enough to so that you don’t get imbeciles and you give them similar responsibilty to the robots.
April 15th, 2008 at 10:41 amThe problem is that half the time they are not allowed to do anything that isn’t showing on their script on screen so even if they can see an obvious way to help you they are not allowed to do so.
I’m a bit concerned about robots having seen the Teminator films and now reading about various robot weaponry the US and presumably other nations are putting into action.
We’re all gonna die…. Anyone got a time machine handy?