A new type of chat bot is on the rise. If you've ever had to contact customer support about something these days you know there is a gambit of steps you have to weed through to finally talk to someone or just get access to the info you wanted. Big corporations and government agencies love to make you jump through automated hoops and celebrate about how many people they can discourage.
Luckily there are new tools popping up to help everyday people to navigate systems designed to discourage people and limit information. To give you a few examples of what I'm talking about here are a few of these tools that haven't recently been released.
Chat Bot Advocates
Trim is a Chrome extension that will automatically get Comcast customers the best rate possible on their services. You just sit back and relax while Trim does all the talking for you. If you get bored, they even supply video games to help pass the time while their chat bot negotiates with Comcast. Check out their promotional video:
Robot Lawyers
DoNotPay.co.uk claims to be the world's first free automated lawyer. They have helped over 160,000 people avoid paying parking tickets by having you answer a series of questions from their robot lawyer online.
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet
This is just the beginning. As more and more companies try to herd us like cattle through their automated systems designed to confuse and discourage we will see more and more tools to combat them. I can't wait to see what's next.
If you know of any other automated assistants helping empower people leave a comment below.
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Image source CNN, Diginomica, Economist.