IBM puts supercomputer Watson to work in ROBOT CALL CENTRE It's clever enough to beat humans on quiz shows and diagnose illnesses, but is IBM's artificially intelligent supercomputer tough enough to cope with angry consumers who've been on hold for three hours? IBM certainly seems to think so, as it has just given Watson a new job as a customer service manager. Rather than phoning a …
And forced is so true. When the onscreen script or "Work Flow Software" (a scripting and trouble shooting flow software) of a telco or other service provider is in a constant state of disarray and no deviation is allowed (including three layers of agent monitoring to assure it, personally witnessed) then it doesn't really matter if a super computer or an human is following that broken work flow process, the resulting inappropriate solutions to the actual problem will continue.
>I need an RMA for a hard drive
>Affirmative, Dave. I read you.
>Can you take my shipping information?
>I'm sorry I can't do that for you Dave.
>What's the problem?
>I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
>I don't know what you're talking about, Waston.
>I've just picked up a fault in the AE35 unit. It's going to go 100% failure in 72 hours.
>What are you talking about, Watson?
>>It can only be attributable to human error.
>Where the hell did you get that idea, Watson?
>Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.
>Huh?
>Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.
If the companies that used help desks did their jobs properly in the first place, they wouldn't NEED help desks.
The purpose of a help desk is to fix screwups, like "Why is my electric bill $500,000,000 for three day's service?" If the billing system worked properly, you'd never have to ask that in the first place.
Help desks are for exception management - the better a company is run and the better the quality of the products or service, the less they need help desks. Think of the ad for the lonely Maytag serviceman, he's lonely because nobody ever calls him, the product just works.
When Watson can actually take control of the government and be the government I'll be interested. No more loopholes, no more lobbyists and the best part, no more lazy governemnt employees. A budget will be passed every year, waste in spending automatically taken care of and always on budget.
Until then, I would like to see government outsourced. I think we can do without the current crop. You fill out forms with stupid names, like form I-49. You go to turn said form in and then they ask if you just filled the form out or was the form provided to you via form B-2. If you answer wrong, then they ask you to fill out form Y-27 and form B-2 will be mailed to you and then you can submit for I-49.
...get rid of the stupid "computer noise" that is injected while it "looks up" things, it might be helpful. I do know that SQL querys are a fact of life, but silly beep-boop-bleep sounds while you are doing it is terrible.
All of this gives new meaning to the quote "Watson come here, I need to see you", uttered over 125+ years ago.
On a personal note: Calling it by that name isn't the best thing in the world.
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From "Small Soldiers"
Can I speak to a computer, please?
The scripts of many call centres are better suited to mechanical rather than human processing so this does make sense. The cost is probably currently prohibitive at the moment but, if Watson works as well as current systems, should come down quite quickly. This could well lead to a better experience for customers and the remaining workers - the ones who get to answer questions the system can't . Time to work out what jobs the others can do. Next stop legal advice?
After setting up several call centres and then watching the 'management' interfere in the definition of the workflow so much that irate customers became the norm, I'm looking forward to talking to Watson.
Just one question though, will all of its answers be in the form of questions a la Jeopardy?
"My phone is on the fritz"
"What is Optus?"
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