

Bank of America Bot Cares About You - eksith
http://eksith.wordpress.com/2013/07/07/bank-of-america-bot/

======
lstamour
I think those were real, un-empowered humans using a script. My favourite? The
"I would feel that way too" script that Google Play uses: straight from an
email, no joke, I once got "Thank you for contacting the Google Play Support
team. I understand you are waiting on a response. If I was feeling ignored, I
would be upset as well. I assure you I have the information for you on your
return." or the variant "Thank you for your response. I understand you are
having trouble with the tracking number. If I was not receiving necessary
information, I would be upset as well. I assure you I have the solution for
this brief hang up." (and says there is no tracking number for the item I sent
in 3 weeks ago to return! So I replied I was being ignored and got that little
gem above...)

I think my favourite has to be the "nothing to say here..." email which
emphasizes how they should really cut down the customer service drone talk to
the simple sentence "We're looking into it, I'll get back to you." Instead:

Thank you for contacting the Google Play Support team. I understand you are
having trouble with your return. If I was experiencing return issues, I would
be upset as well. I assure you I have the information to confirm the movement
of your refund.

In order to get this issue resolved, I am going to go ahead and let you know
that this matter is being consulted, and I will send a follow up email when I
receive the information pertaining to your return.

Cordially,

X, Google Play Support Team

Sometimes they forget to personalize entirely, as in the one sent to kick off
the botched return process: (the following is unedited)

Hello ,

Thank you for contacting Google concerning your Nexus _. My name is Æsa and I
will be taking over your case from this point forward. I understand your
concern and why this is important to you and will do the best I can to assist
you.

~~~
eli
I agree.

Look at this ridiculous conversation I had with Norton support on Twitter the
other day:
[https://twitter.com/esd/status/352070221227503616](https://twitter.com/esd/status/352070221227503616)

I'm sure they're real people working from a script, but they might as well be
bot.

~~~
lstamour
Wow. That's nearly as awesome. I mean, it installed something when you
uninstall, that's the problem. "We are sorry for the trouble. Do you want to
uninstall the Norton tool bar? It was meant to keep you protected. -Arun
cc:esd" could be taken both ways, however -- and that's my problem with
tweets. Sometimes what we interpret as "clueless" is really someone just
"making sure you're okay" using the given script after shooting off too quick
with a support response. Not saying they read your tweet, as obviously they
didn't respond appropriately about the uninstall, but the responses are
consistent with the language on their site:
[http://safeweb.norton.com/lite](http://safeweb.norton.com/lite) (The title
says "Is this website safe" and later in the page says, "It's our way of
giving back to the online community.")

By comparison, emails are longer-form and less "instant" than tweets. They
(Google) should have been able to get it as human as Apple did when I had
unactivated iTunes gift cards. (The second time, that is. The first time took
them awhile, so it's hit or miss in my experience. I've also learned to never
expect real support from Microsoft Store or Adobe -- basically anyone with a
"live chat" support service.)

------
peterkelly
According to [https://twitter.com/BofA_Help#](https://twitter.com/BofA_Help#)
-

"Bank of America ‏@BofA_Help 26 May In observance with the Memorial holiday,
our Social Media Team will be off Monday, May 27, 2013 and returning on
Tuesday, May 28, 2013."

Good to know the machine gets to take a break from its hard work now and then.

~~~
aptwebapps
Maybe their Social Media Team never came back.

------
dkokelley
There are some circumstances where it is best to use technology as a tool to
empower humans, instead of as a replacement for humans. Customer service is
probably one of those circumstances.

------
peterkelly
I wish Douglas Adams was still alive to see this

~~~
garysweaver
I wish Douglas Adams was still alive and writing.

And, someone should make marvin_bot
([https://twitter.com/marvin_bot](https://twitter.com/marvin_bot)) start-up a
conversation with @bankofamerica.

------
lakeeffect
I have a friend that sends these out for bank of America, he works in the
office of the president of the company. The company has been ahead of the
curve contacting twitter complainers and finding a resolution. These form
comments are actually submitted by a person, attempting to keep boa positive
as an aggregate of total tweets with mention. No bot included.

~~~
sgt101
Doesn't that stunningly miss the point of sentiment analysis and customer
service? If you are optimizing the score with your own output in what way does
the sentiment represent a proxy for any meaningful business measure like
retention, loyalty or willingness to pay? Surely it's just a proxy for "we
have a fella who tweets"?

------
sharkweek
Truthfully -- I respect a company that doesn't even try to offer good customer
service much more than one that tries to fake it

~~~
eksith
It is a weird paradox, isn't it? Almost as if you don't feel as upset
(depending on severity) if a dog bites you than if a squirrel did.

Well, dogs just bite; that's what they do. But squirrels pretend to be all
cute and vulnerable and then bite you anyway if you get too close. In your
head, you'd be "WTF SQUIRREL?! I TRUSTED YOU, YOU CUTE BASTARD! WHY CAN'T YOU
ALWAYS SHOW YOUR TRUE COLORS?"

Man, I hate squirrels. I love squirrels too.

~~~
saraid216
I wonder if this falls under the category of uncanny valley.

~~~
Amadou
Forget the valley, I think eksith is under the influence. If that ain't stoner
talk, I don't know what is...

~~~
eksith
I don't do drugs (except coffee). It's 3:43AM. I tried sleeping for the last 3
hours. Phone rang twice in that time and I'm tired.

~~~
Amadou
It was a joke man. It isn't hard to imagine the guys from that 70's show
sitting in the basement and Kelso going off on that squirrel rant.

------
clarky07
I know it isn't the point of the article, but I can't understand people
getting upset at a bank for foreclosing a house. Pay your mortgage and they
are unlikely to foreclose.

~~~
eksith
Except when this happens :
[https://www.google.com/search?q=bank+of+america+wrongful+for...](https://www.google.com/search?q=bank+of+america+wrongful+foreclosures)

You're right in that paying a mortgage will make foreclosure "unlikely", but
it's not impossible. Also note, BofA was among many _predatory lenders_. I.E.
those institutions that have outright lied, misled or otherwise duped
borrowers into mortgage deals that were woefully unfit for their financial
situation. They continued this practice in renegotiations for loan
modification after the market crash.

This was revealed by several BofA whistleblowers:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=bank+of+america+whistleblowe...](https://www.google.com/search?q=bank+of+america+whistleblowers)

Which makes payments to prevent foreclosure unlikely as well.

~~~
clarky07
That's why I said unlikely. There were some issues, and those are unfortunate,
but most people had it coming. As for the "predatory" lending, I still have no
sympathy. If you are taking out a loan for hundreds of thousands of dollars,
you should be doing your own due diligence. It's stupid of them to give those
loans because they will lose money, but the guy taking that loan still needs
to know if he can afford it or not.

~~~
eksith
Due diligence is impossible when being lied to, isn't it? I don't think you
know what _Predatory lending_ really means.

A lot of people saying, "well they should have looked into it" etc... haven't
met anyone who's fallen victim to it and, from my experience, haven't had to
face true adversity. This isn't a knock on you, I don't know you. This just
from meeting people face to face who say "well it wouldn't happen to me. I've
got common sense!" When the piece of paper presented to you is delivered with
a smile and a lie (in many cases, half the contract missing), it's not just a
matter of diligence.

You're not above human fallibility.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_lending](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_lending)

~~~
clarky07
>Due diligence is impossible when being lied to, isn't it? I don't think you
know what Predatory lending really means.

Nothing in your article says anything about lying. The main idea is -
"imposing unfair and abusive loan terms on borrowers."

The main practices included adjustable rate mortgages that relied on housing
prices to continue going up. People took out loans that they could just barely
afford at the low intro rate hoping to either sell or refinance after the
prices went up.

Other practices included simply offering bigger mortgages than people could
afford.

Basically the banks and the borrowers were both greedy and wrongly assumed
that house prices would continue to go up. When they didn't, both parties got
screwed. The borrowers got foreclosed, and the banks lost a lot of money on
the houses they got back.

Lots of people lost a lot of money in the housing crisis (me included sadly),
but that doesn't mean they were victims, and it doesn't mean they had to be
foreclosed on. If you lost your job and couldn't find another one, that's one
thing. If you simply couldn't afford the loan you took out, that's on you. I
know the loan docs include lots of pages, but when you are borrowing hundreds
of thousands of dollars reading them is probably a good idea. I'm pretty sure
even the predatory lending docs still included the % interest, amount
borrowed, monthly payments, etc.

------
lifeformed
What's the "^sa" that it keeps appending at the end?

~~~
sathyabhat
Generally, it's the initials of the Support rep who's replying to the tweet.

~~~
ghayes
I suppose this is all off-topic, but is that common syntax? I've never seen it
before.

~~~
corin_
It was introduced by third-party applications which give multiple people
access to a single (or more than one) Twitter account(s). I'm not sure if it
was the first to do it, but CoTweet was the earliest that I recall, it would
tag tweets with ^CC (initials) based on which CoTweet user account was
replying.

Since then it's become fairly standard in customer support, presumably still
largely through these third-party apps, but potentially typed manually by some
companies as well.

~~~
sathyabhat
Yep, cotweet was the first app that I saw which seemed to adopt that style

------
scdoshi
I imagine they would have had a much better response if they had just made the
twitter handle @BofA_HelpBot

~~~
lucb1e
I think a support team is supposed to work with the bot and the bot only
initiates contact that the team can then follow up on. Or at least, that's
what I'd hope. It seems the support team was afk during that conversation
though...

------
bwb
Bank Of America is the worst bank I've ever worked with, just dropped them. We
used them for multiple business accounts and their ineptitude is legendary.
Stay away. I literally had reps that lied to us about things, left out pages
of contracts etc. They were fired but its an epidemic at that place. They
forgot who they work for.

------
choult
Just having a look through the current conversations on @BofA_Help, I suspect
that if "SA" is a bot then it's employed to triage extreme negative sentiment;
if there's an actual complaint behind it all then a real agent steps in, eg.
[https://twitter.com/BofA_Help/status/353641709789388800](https://twitter.com/BofA_Help/status/353641709789388800)

Quite an efficient way for a customer service team to work, but I'm not sure
how it's going to affect the perception of them now that people have pointed
it out.

~~~
ben1040
Yep. I bet the "SA" even stands for "Sentiment Analysis."

------
hoodq
Scale is the problem. Let's say this wasn't about Bank of America but rather
"your favorite giant company" \-- the one that has 40 million online users and
16 million mobile users. How does a relationship that large engage in a
meaningful, authentic dialogue in tweet-time?

~~~
benjamincburns
Personally I'd rather they just didn't try instead of faking it. The latter is
disingenuous and belittles the customer.

------
kunle
This is great. Someone obviously asked "What's our social media strategy" and
got sold some "AI" by someone who said "It's just like SIRI, only better!" and
this is what they bought. Sigh.

~~~
dirkgently
Well, to be frank, Siri is equally good at pretending to help, without really
helping. At least the bofa boat does not say anything in that creepy monotone.

------
Yhippa
So I guess this is one mark on the "failed Turing Test" side.

------
beezlebob
oh this could be interesting, a bunch of IT people arguing about automation
being wrong :)

~~~
Widdershin
I get that you're kidding, but no automation is better than automation that
doesn't solve a problem.

