DoNotPay Will Now Call Customer Service Hotlines For You (fastcompany.com) 14
An anonymous reader shares a report: If you dread the thought of calling to change an airline ticket or negotiate your internet bill, a new artificial intelligence tool may provide a solution. DoNotPay, which offers an assortment of consumer-friendly services like tracking subscriptions, generating burner phone numbers, and searching for unclaimed property, now features a bot that will call customer service numbers for users, navigate through phone menus and sit through hold music, then politely but firmly advocate on users' behalf.
The company shared examples of its AI calling a cellphone provider for help porting a phone number and talking with an airline to cancel a flight within the 24-hour cancellation window. Joshua Browder, CEO and founder of DoNotPay, says getting updates on lost luggage and seeking compensation for flight delays are also common use cases. DoNotPay already offered tools to connect to customer service agents via chat windows, and to draft and send emails, faxes, and even snail mail to companies on behalf of users.
But while the service's artificial intelligence had enough smarts to wait on hold for users, then hand over a call when an agent was available, until recently AI models were not capable of carrying on a convincing voice conversation with a human operator in real time. Browder says that changed with Open AI's GPT-4o model, unveiled in May. "That has reduced the delay by about 70%, so instead of it taking three seconds to come up with a response, it now takes under a second, and that's finally fast enough to hold these phone conversations," he says. "So now we're doing thousands of these calls."
The company shared examples of its AI calling a cellphone provider for help porting a phone number and talking with an airline to cancel a flight within the 24-hour cancellation window. Joshua Browder, CEO and founder of DoNotPay, says getting updates on lost luggage and seeking compensation for flight delays are also common use cases. DoNotPay already offered tools to connect to customer service agents via chat windows, and to draft and send emails, faxes, and even snail mail to companies on behalf of users.
But while the service's artificial intelligence had enough smarts to wait on hold for users, then hand over a call when an agent was available, until recently AI models were not capable of carrying on a convincing voice conversation with a human operator in real time. Browder says that changed with Open AI's GPT-4o model, unveiled in May. "That has reduced the delay by about 70%, so instead of it taking three seconds to come up with a response, it now takes under a second, and that's finally fast enough to hold these phone conversations," he says. "So now we're doing thousands of these calls."
If only there were a way... (Score:2)
Even better, why not
Re: (Score:3)
That's in the USA, obv
And soon (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
And soon air lines will completely replace their customer support with AI and the circle will be closed
Fine with me, as long as the service actually gets canceled. Why waste any human's time with it?
If you want to cancel (Score:2)
Re:If you want to cancel (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, definitely do it that way. This is perfectly legal and they are obliged to respect it. For the more scammy ones, make it certified mail and have a witness to what you are sending.
Credit card companies do and will continue to reverse charges. After all, the one charging you could simply do so without any evidence or right to do so. Sure, they sometimes try to prevent that by lying to you. A sure way is to simply request the "original invoice". They then have to go to the one that made the charge to get that. Typically that invoice will not materialize (because that would be fraud and criminal) and the charge gets reversed. At the cost of the one that made the charge. The minimal thing you need to do is make a copy of the credit card statement, mark the ones you want reversed as "please reverse", date and sign and send them via mail. That is entirely enough, and they know it. Requesting the original invoice is safer though, because sometimes you may be mistaken as well. The one time I was, the charge got reversed anyways, because the one that charged me was unable to find out what they had charged me for. Was only around $10 though.
But is it really AI⦠(Score:2)
Morons on _both_ sides? That will work well... (Score:2)
This essentially just means to give up on those hotlines. Which may be an accurate view of the "service" provided.
And you know what's amusing? (Score:2)
Those bots are probably themselves talking to other bots.
In other words, greedy corporations provide terrible, automated customer service becaus it's cheaper than paying actual, competent service reps a bit more, and customers pay someone / something to suffer through that particular hell on their behalf. Guess who's paying for corporate greed in the end?
It's really sad hat it has come to this (Score:2)
Enshittification is providing an opportunity for new businesses to get created to assist the consumer with disconnecting from said enshittified businesses.
Wouldn't it be better to regulate or reform the enshittified businesses which use severe friction to prevent someone from canceling or changing something?
guys seriously (Score:1)
just be aware that they're completely a scam (Score:2)
Read up on Kathryn Tewson's investigation of them. They're 100% a scam, they were never legitimate, they weren't even trying to use actual AI originally, and nothing they say is true. They've already been fined by the FTC for some of this.
This is like Slashdot running a piece on how a nigerian oil exec has twenty million dollars to donate to you. Absolutely unconscionable.