Latest news with #ProblemSolver
Phone Arena
15-05-2025
- Business
- Phone Arena
Verizon representatives really dislike the AI tools meant to make their jobs easier
Last year Verizon introduced generative AI into its app and retail experiences for customers and employees alike to benefit from. One year on and it seems that the consensus among Verizon representatives is that these AI tools — Personal Shopper and Problem Solver — just make their jobs even tools are supposed to analyze the profile of the customer that a representative is currently dealing with and provide custom-tailored help. However what Personal Shopper keeps doing instead is adding perks and other extras that the employees then have to remove before going back to what needs doing. Verizon marketed the tools as something that would help both customers and employees reduce the time it takes to resolve a standard problem. AI would match a Verizon user with the representative that it thinks would be perfect for said user's specific needs. This sounds really good in theory but some Verizon employees claim that the company is misusing these tools to make up for lost subscribers. Verizon has millions of users but is losing them at a steady rate. | Image credit — Verizon Modern AI models — though fascinating technology — are usually met with resistance whenever they're introduced somewhere. This is usually because these AI models still cannot replicate a human perfectly and also often mean multiple people losing their jobs. The same sentiment is shared amongst Verizon employees who angrily proclaimed that AI needed to also reminds me of T-Mobile's app T-Life. T-Mobile recently started making it mandatory for customers and employees to use T-Life. This was a very contentious decision as many users still claim that the app is a broken mess. The AI problem is similar because T-Life and Verizon 's AI tools are meant to eventually phase out the retail experience entirely but both solutions have problems. Verizon employees are currently having to tolerate using the AI tools because they don't really have any other options. Some have even found a small workaround that makes it a bit easier to resolve a problem quicker without having the AI keep adding unwanted extras. As AI continues to seep into every aspect of our lives we can expect many more similar stories in the future. It doesn't matter how intelligent an AI model may be if it's told to do something that the user may not have asked for.
Harvard Business Review
01-05-2025
- Business
- Harvard Business Review
In Uncertain Times, Ask These Questions Before You Make a Decision
is the founder and CEO of Decisive, a decision sciences company using her AREA Method decision-making system for individuals, companies, and nonprofits looking to solve complex problems. Decisive offers digital tools and in-person training, workshops, coaching and consulting. Cheryl is a long-time educator teaching at Columbia Business School and Cornell and has won several journalism awards for her investigative news stories. She's authored two books on complex problem solving, Problem Solved for personal and professional decisions, and Investing In Financial Research about business, financial, and investment decisions. Her new book, Problem Solver, is about the psychology of personal decision-making and Problem Solver Profiles. For more information please watch Cheryl's TED talk and visit
