Comcast's customer services is an Eliza program

[elfs]

I had a brief network outage this morning, about two hours, and it was annoying: about half the Internet was unavailable to me, including some reference sites I needed for work. I decided to use Comcast's "Online Customer Service Chat" system, since that seemed to be more timely than using the phone.

Tell me "Nikki" here isn't an Eliza program:

Nikki> Hi there! How are you doing today?
Elf> Pretty good, all things considered.
Nikki> Great to know you are doing good.
Elf> Has there been a border router failure somewhere? Major sites like Slashdot, Tumblr, my bank, some (but not all) parts of Amazon seem to be unavailable. I was able to SSH into a remote site and access Slashdot through there, so it seem to be a router issue.
Nikki> I see here you are having problems with your internet connection. Are you referring to slow connectivity?
Elf> No, I'm referring to route completion failure. I have no connectivity (not slow, not "intermittent", but *no*) connectivity to about half the Internet. When I run traceroute, packet delivery fails somewhere near the Comcast border.
Nikki> Just to verify, you have no internet connection, is that correct?
Elf> No, I have Internet connection. I'm talking to you, aren't I?
Nikki> Okay.
Elf> But it's unlikely that all of those sites went down as one. Oh, and add Twitter to the list of sites I can't reach. Bing comes up. Yahoo comes up.
Nikki> Does this mean you are having problems accessing some websites, is that correct?
Elf> Yes.
Nikki> I see. I understand that you are having problem accessing some websites. I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you. Do not worry, your satisfaction is my top priority. I will do my best so that your internet will work again today.
Nikki> I have checked the account and I see there is currently an outage in your area. This is the reason your connection is so slow and you cannot access some websites. It is not a problem with your computer.
Elf> Thank you. Your "network status" page does not reflect this problem.
Nikki> Please consider this issue closed. Our network techinicans will have your connection up as soon as possible.
Elf> Fine, thanks. Have a nice day.

Hell, I could write that program. It just picked out some codewords and fed them through an algorithm, winnowing down possibilities without any initiative at all, trying to figure out if it could solve the problem before it had to call the real Nikki and have its human overseer deal with the issue.

Comments

[stephaniesmom.livejournal.com]

yay scripting. I hate it when techsup has a script they're not allowed to deviate from. I had to make a phone call the other day myself, and when I told him exactly what was going on, the poor guy was flabbergasted that *gasp* a woman! knew what she was talking about. Ugh. Still had to go through all the steps before I could get any sort of answer, which was no help at all.

[shunra.livejournal.com]

"Automatic for the People: Comcast Goes ''Live'' With Online Customer Support - The cable provider is using an automated agent to answer customers' inquiries."

http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/CRM-News/Daily-News/Automatic-for-the-People-Comcast-Goes-Live-With-Online-Customer-Support-44591.aspx

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Wow, thanks. I hadn't read that before. Now that's depressing. If I couldn't solve the problem myself, I doubt Eliza's gonna help me.

It's interactions like this that make me think the Singularity is still a long, long way off.

[shunra.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I came across it when I was researching web hosting last year. Sometimes, you just need a human...

...in any event, one of the places I was looking at had something called HumanTalk or PersonSpeak (or something along those lines ), which was anything-but-live-humans. It had a sales pitch for its service, which I went ahead and viewed its demo. It was impressively non-communicative; I've seen PR people who let more actual information slip than that.

Sorry, no singularity by the first half of October 2010. At least, not in English-speaking customer service bots.

[hydrolagus.livejournal.com]

I knew I was going to need to leave a job when the new supervisor decided we needed to work from a script, especially one in which we were required to try to plug additional services before addressing the customer's issue.

[mouser.livejournal.com]

Considering that was in 2004, I'm wondering if they've just slapped a voice to text/text to voice interface on it...

I will admit that one of the things I try to do is keep up the banter so they know I'm still there (I hate the techs that mute the phone for 10 minutes and don't respond to "HEY! ARE YOU STILL THERE?"

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

I offer to hum the "Jeopardy" theme while we're waiting for servers to come back up.

[stephaniesmom.livejournal.com]

Egad. I feel for you. It's one thing to work from a script if you're in a marketing company, but never tech support. I expect my tech support to actually know more than I do. This is why I call, because I, you know, need help?

[urox.livejournal.com]

AT&T has the same thing.
me: is there a contract that comes with this phone? I didn't see any listed with this phone but I saw one with others.
bot: You must sign the contract.

[gromm.livejournal.com]

I probably would have quit that very afternoon, saying that they were no longer asking me to provide customer service; they just wanted me to serve as a human-computer interface. And that it was nothing short of being a massive *disservice* to their customers.

Not that they'd care, quite honestly. Large companies are interested in minimizing the gap between "what the customer will put up with" and "the minimum amount of service we can provide per customer".

[orcaarrow.livejournal.com]

WOW! Actually, sounds very similar to the when I've called Mediacom's customer service.

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/xkcd_rss/201317.html

i saw that first thing this morning, and thought of you.

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

Amusingly, XKCD's strip from Friday is so appropriate here...

[bikerwalla.livejournal.com]

With just-a-tad-too-long pauses so you want to feel sorry for this, a person who is typing slowly, in tech support of all places.

[yamazakikun.livejournal.com]

The first thing I thought of when I saw that headline was the episode of Sarah Connor Chronicles. Then I noticed the article was written in 2004. A pity; it would make so much more sense that way.