Human after all

December 22, 2013 7:04 PM

A week ago the Time bureau chief got a call from what at first appeared to be a real person, but it quickly became apparent it was not. And yet when asked, it claimed to be a real person vehemently.

What it was actually, was more complex and depressing than anyone had imagined at first:

This query led me down a strange rabbit hole. And along the way, I discovered that Samantha West may be something even stranger than a telemarketing robot. Samantha West may be a human sitting in a foreign call center playing recorded North American English through a soundboard. [...]

Clearly, this is not human conversation: there are repeated laughs and weird phrases. "She failed several other [humanity] tests," Time wrote. "When asked 'What vegetable is found in tomato soup?' she said she did not understand the question. When asked multiple times what day of the week it was yesterday, she complained repeatedly of a bad connection."

Further down the rabbit hole, the motivation and why behind this is zeroed in on: Distrust of employees, and American xenophobia:

"I don't know if you know anything about Six Sigma," Coombs asked rhetorically. "But a human being is at best a 2-sigma machine. Which means that humans get things right 92 to 93 percent of the time. If you think about that, if I take a 100 calls, that means that 7 to 8 of those callers don't get the right information, not because I'm trying to mislead but because I got in a fight with my wife or I hate this call center job or I'm tired and I made a mistake."

"Consumers thought they were getting something for free, a trial, and they kept getting billed," he said. "One of my agents can't do that. The offer is going to be made exactly as it is intended to be. You take away the ability of someone to misrepresent something. You take away the ability to omit required disclosures."

To hear these companies tell it, if you take away a lot of abilities, perhaps what's left is a more ideal telemarketing call experience.

Though no one quite puts it this way, the number-one selling point for the soundboard technology is obvious to Filipino telemarketers: Americans' xenophobia. We want to hear from people who sound just like us. [...]

Think about how rough it would be to be told by some single-language-speaking, first-world jerk that you, a college-degreed, up-and-coming Filipino youth, were annoying because of your accent. Now imagine being told that hundreds of times a day. What kind of anxiety might you start to feel each time you opened your mouth?

posted by emptythought (2 comments total)

wow, i tried to push preview again and it posted... i guess this looks fine though. the only thing missing is a couple more [...]'s
posted by emptythought at 7:05 PM on December 22, 2013

I got a few calls like this last week (healthcare related, where it was definitely a robot but it seemed set up with some canned answers in response to stuff I said), and now I'm sad I didn't try to converse with it a little longer.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:14 PM on December 22, 2013