Here’s a great example that you can easily relate to: We are all familiar with the words “this call
may be recorded for quality or training purposes.” When you hear that phrase, it might also mean
that your call may be monitored by a computer algorithm.
There is a company called Mattersight that has developed more
than five million eavesdropping algorithms that use only the words you say in a
three-minute conversation to determine your personality type, what you want,
and how you might be most easily and quickly satisfied by a customer service
agent. The software divides people into
six sorts of personalities. According to
the WSJ article, “The next time you
call, the algorithms, recognizing your phone number, will route you to an agent
with a personality similar to your own, which results in calls that are half as
long and reach happy resolutions 92% of the time, compared with 47% otherwise,
according to an assessment of 1,500 customer service calls at Vodafone, the
European telecom company.”
I don’t know about you, but I’m going to have to think about
this for a while. Should I like these
eavesdropping algorithms that ensure my customer service experience will be
superb? Or is there something I’m not
thinking about; something I should be worried about? Let me know what you think or how you feel
about this.
Earl Weaver came on board as the manager of the Baltimore
Orioles in 1968. Although he was ejected
from 91 games, kicked dirt at the umpires, and had the foulest mouth in
baseball, many thought he had panache and a wicked sense of humor. Here’s a
great example of that humor: “Following
one altercation with an umpire, Weaver headed toward the dugout screaming, ‘I'm
going to check the rule-book on that!’
When the umpire taunted, ‘Here, use mine.’ Weaver yelled back, "That's no good - I
can't read Braille!”
Back in the 1950’s, my Dad would drive our family 12 to 17
hours to visit my grandfather (Mom’s Dad and extended family) at their family
farm about a mile from the Hudson River in the Catskill Mountains. In those days, Dad would throw a spare fuel
pump and a water pump in the trunk in case the car broke down. When we regularly approached a very big and
very tall bridge on the route, Dad would always say “I sure hope we make it to
the top because if we break down going up it’s going to be really tricky
backing down this side against traffic.”
And if we did make it to the top, at least we could roll down the other
side if the car broke down. I remember
our car actually breaking down or over-heating more than once going up that
extremely tall bridge. And you can
imagine the adventure of having to roll backwards back down the bridge against
traffic. As you’ve guessed, cars in those days were not very reliable on long
trips, accounting for the 5 hour variation in our one-way yearly vacation
travel time
Within a day or two of our arrival, Dad would take a bus
back home by himself, a trip usually lasting 24 hours or more, leaving the car
for Mom to use. And then in a couple of
weeks he would make that long bus ride back to drive us home. Looking back, I know the sacrifice he made making
that bus trip both ways, plus driving the car by himself taking the family up
and back home was truly a sign of how much he loved us. Sometimes looking back and remembering is the
best way to really appreciate how lucky we were and how much we were loved
growing up.
Isn’t it amazing how a timely rainfall and the resulting
green grass can make us feel better overnight.
It’s a powerful antidote for what doesn’t make us feel better such as politics
and news headlines.
