When one of your collectors is lucky enough to get someone to pick up the phone, are they sure they are talking to a human on the other end of the line? There is a growing chance that the person they think is real is not, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal, which reports on how people are hiring phone bots “to torture” telemarketers.
Free access to the article is available by clicking here.
The report details how the bots — different personalities that are backed by ChatGPT — are programmed to waste the time and frustrate telemarketers to the point where they hang up. It’s not hard to see how this technology could easily be used on debt collectors, too, if it’s not already. The product mentioned in the article is available by subscription and costs $24.99 per year. It was created by the chief product officer at Contact Center Compliance, who has been seeking to foil telemarketers since one used a bad word during a conversation with his son on the family’s landline phone.
The objective is to have the bots say “dumb things that are somewhat funny” and believable enough to keep callers engaged, according to the report.
“Anyway I think I owe about, what was it, $15,000 or was it $1,500. I can never remember,” Whitebeard said. “Let me go find my reading glasses and check my statements. I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”
Interestingly enough, the report notes that ChatGPT rejected requests to create the scripts because it didn’t encourage people to waste other people’s time. The creator said he ultimately got GPT on board by prompting it with the message that it was a personal assistant and needed to protect its boss from being scammed. The bots are even trained to use grunts and other verbal cues, like saying “uh-huh” to keep telemarketers on the phone and talking.
