There’s a moment of darkness in the WorkPod as you swing the door closed, before the screens surrounding you flicker to light. You lean back in your chair and take a swig of your coffee as the introductory text unfurls in front of you, floating over the white backdrop.
Welcome to your GarantiLife Customer Satisfaction Centre Please take a moment to orient yourself with your workstation.
You rock back and forth in your chair as you wait for the tutorial to finish.
At the GarantiLife Customer Satisfaction Centre, we take advantage of the Virtual Reality technology provided by WorkPod to build a virtual workspace. We aim to simulate a walk-in customer service centre, allowing you to create an authentic connection with our clients and improve their experience as you resolve their issues. In a moment, your virtual desk will be approached by an avatar of a client seeking help with an issue. Please do not be alarmed by any irregularities in their appearance. As most of our clients connect to our service centre by video call, we use WorkPod's state-of-the-art motion capture and imaging technology to merge the live video with an artificially generated body. This can occasionally lead to visual "hiccups."
Desks begin to fade in around you, simple grey boxes stretching off into the distance. You sit up, placing your coffee into the WorkPod cup holder, and put your hands on the keyboard in front of you.
Let's get started. Here comes your first client.
As the words disappear, a figure glides toward you. From the shoulders down it looks like a life-sized ball-jointed mannequin, coloured a faded off-white. Above the shoulders, though, it melts into the face of an old woman, a pair of glasses perched on the tip of her nose.
“Hello,” the woman says. “I’m trying to add my granddaughter as a beneficiary on my policy. Do you think you could give me a hand?”
In order to add a beneficiary, you'll need to access this client's file. The first thing you'll need...
“Absolutely,” you reply, ignoring the text scrolling beside the figure’s head. “I’ll just need your full name, date of birth, and your plan number.”
“Of course,” the woman replies. “It’s Brenda Louise Phillips…”
You enter the information and pull up the woman’s file, causing the help text to halt abruptly and start a new message.
Well done! Now scroll down...
“Great,” you say. “I’m sending a ‘Change of Beneficiary’ form for you to fill out with your granddaughter’s information, and I’ll be here to answer any questions you have. First, though, can you verify the following information?”
The help text stutters and jumps as you speed through the steps of the process, trading numbers and personal data with the human/mannequin hybrid standing in front of you. Before long she smiles and fades away, to be replaced with more text.
Great job! Don't forget, you can always use the "Help" button in the bottom right corner to consult our Support Chatbot. To contact your supervisor, simply tell the Chatbot and it'll connect you immediately. You're entitled to one hour of break time, divided however you wish. To take a break, just hit the "Pause" button. Let's meet another client...
*
The morning passes smoothly as you work through a variety of clients and issues. Sophie Hannah Jackson, contact information update. John David Brown, password reset. Alice Amy Brown, change of banking information. James Nathan Hill, change of plan. You take a break for lunch, stepping out of the WorkPod to eat a packed lunch in the small food court down the hall. Then you step back into the WorkPod and close the door.
The next client avatar looks strange. Unlike your other clients, who meld smoothly into their torso at the shoulders, this one has a distinct line between the video feed’s colours and the off-white of the computer-generated body.
“Hello?” he asks. It’s a man in his thirties, with glasses and a thin beard. “Am I coming through all right?”
“Yes, I can hear you fine,” you reply. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m having some sort of billing problem with my grandfather’s life insurance. The last instalment was supposed to arrive a week ago but I haven’t gotten anything. Thought I’d try your help line.” He cranes his head forward to take a closer look at you and your desk, his avatar juddering as it attempts to stay aligned. “This is a neat system though, eh?”
You chuckle politely. “It’s very nice, yes. Can I get your name and your grandfather’s plan number?”
“You got it. Kennedy Max. The number is…62873491002.”
“Max Kennedy?”
“No, Kennedy Max. First name Kennedy, last name Max.”
“That’s an unusual name,” you comment as you enter it into the system.
He winks. “I’m an unusual person.”
“And your grandfather’s name was…Jameson Edward Lee?”
“That’s grandpa.”
You read over the file and frown. There’s an unfamiliar error message in the beneficiaries section. You open up the Chatbot.
CHATBOT: Hello, what can I help you with? ME: what is ##ERR:NSF_NF ? CHATBOT: ... CHATBOT: I'm sorry, I don't know that. Would you like to contact your supervisor? ME: yes CHATBOT: Please wait. Dialling...
You look up at your client and smile faintly. “Excuse me a second. I’m just going to put you in our wait queue while I sort this out. Please note your camera will still be on, so just be aware of that.”
He clicks his tongue. “Gotcha.” You make a waving motion with your arm, and his avatar glides to the left of your desk.
The minutes drag on as you wait in silence. A new message pops up from the Chatbot.
CHATBOT: Sorry for the wait! I'm having trouble reaching your supervisor. Trying another number...
A full ten minutes pass. Just when you’re about to give up, a rectangle pops up in front of you, giving you a view of a surprised-looking woman in a crisp white button-down shirt.
“Hello? Who is this?”
“Um, hi, I’m at the Customer Satisfaction Centre…”
“Where?”
“The Customer Satisfaction Centre? At GarantiLife?”
The woman looks incredulous. “GarantiLife? What?”
“Is this not GarantiLife Insurance Holdings? Do I have the wrong number?”
“I mean, probably,” the woman replies. “GarantiLife Insurance Holdings went under three months ago. This is the acquisition branch of Pacific Financial Services.”
“…what?”
“Okay, hold on. Give me a second to move a meeting and we’ll get to the bottom of this.” The screen goes blank briefly.
“Okay,” the woman says when she reappears. “Let’s start from the beginning. Where are you, and how long have you been working there?”
“I’m in a GarantiLife WorkPod. I’ve been working customer service here for six months.”
The woman shakes her head in confusion. “Well, that makes no sense, but all right. Are you on contract?”
“Yeah, for one year.”
“And nobody told you the company was shutting down?”
“I haven’t talked to anybody in the company since I was hired. They just registered me in this WorkPod and I’ve been working here ever since.”
“Okay. Well, I’ve got your employee information here, thanks to this Chatbot. Give me a second…” She frowns as she types, her eyes focused on a display off-screen, then sighs.
“Well, it looks like we missed you in the transition because you were never marked as having completed the training simulation. Wait…” she looks up at you. “What have you been doing this whole time?”
You blink. “I’ve been…dealing with customer complaints. People come up to this virtual desk and I resolve their issues…”
The woman stares blankly for a moment. “Oh damn,” she says, then turns her attention off-screen again. After a moment the display changes to a brightly-coloured text document. As you watch, a cursor moves and highlights a paragraph.
To accurately simulate your employee's working conditions, we generate artificially intelligent clients with problems for your trainees to resolve. Thanks to our partnership with WorkPod, these AIs will be nearly indistinguishable from real clients, giving your trainees real-world experience in managing and resolving customer issues.
“Is this what you’ve been doing for the last six months?” the woman asks.
You swallow, which does nothing to help the pit in your stomach. “Um, I guess so.”
There’s a ping from the Chatbot.
CHATBOT: Hello! Your client has been waiting for fifteen minutes! You should probably check in on them.
“Hang on,” says the woman. “Do you have…?” There’s a brief pause. “This just keeps getting weirder and weirder. It looks like you have an actual client in your system.”
“Like, a real person?”
“Real flesh and blood. Okay. Just transfer them to me and I’ll take care of it. For now, I guess you can just go home. We’ll try to figure out how this happened and get in touch with you about what happens next. Sorry about all this.”
“It’s okay.”
She cuts the connection and you stare blankly across your virtual desk for a few moments before waving your arm to bring the client back in front of your desk. “Sorry about the wait,” you say. “I’m just going to transfer you to another rep.”
“Cheers.” You tap the transfer into the system and he fades away. Another avatar appears in the distance, waiting. You can faintly see the outline of a male figure with short hair.
You press the “Pause” button on your console. The lights in the WorkPod dim and you swing the door open.
Harmon Moon 