The Return Of The Live Human Being

Metism writes: "The voice on the other end of the phone does not tell you to 'please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed'. E-mail inquiries do not pretend as though they were never sent. More and more companies are finding out that people actually want to interact with other real people, not pseudo-intelligent machines that can't respond to simple things like 'Hi, how are you?' Did pseudo-intelligent humans forget something so obvious? Companies like LivePerson help clients from large ISPs to small libraries communicate one-on-one with people via the web. Softroad takes the concept of live help one step further by allowing anyone, anywhere access to their live Internet surfers via SMS, 2-way pager, or other mobile device. There's nothing like human ingenuity when it comes to questions more complex than 'what's my balance?' or 'what's the weather in Miami?'. But are more companies going to listen?"

Comments

GET THIS STEALTH MARKETING CRAP OFF OF SLASHDOT!

[popo]

TO ALL SLASHDOT USERS: THIS IS STEALTH MARKETING BULLSHIT

Slashdot will be a much less interesting place if stealth marketers interested in promoting their clients are allowed to post non-newsworthy puff pieces to this site.

As a counterstrategy (in the interest of ridding these pigs from our midst) we should begin an immediate program of badmouthing whoever they promote.

So here goes --

LivePerson is an example of dot-com era corporate bloat. Rob LoCascio, their semi-intelligent CEO, developed what can best be described as a "chat applet" and with that "cutting edge" technology, as well as a little truth-stretching, managed to IPO his company.

The stockprice is currently in the shitter where it belongs. If you want a chat applet on your site, avail yourself of the many cheaper, better-coded, gnu public licensed products that aren't relics of an era better forgotten.