In Defense of Clippy

For those of you who met Clippy, I'm sure you're groaning already. But let me explain. While Clippy was a flawed character I will still defend the basic idea that underlied the design and contend that Clippy is out there waiting for his day. In this defense is a tale of the current state of customer service and an insight into why I am dubious of the grand claims for the future of AI.

While living in SF I shopped at the Safeway at Potrero and 16th. One of the notable characteristics of shopping there, and I suspect at all Safeway stores, is how each and every employee would greet you as you passed them in the aisles. It was obviously a requirement on them and I found it annoying since I loose myself in wandering the aisles looking at products I don't know. Each greeting was an unwelcome interruption to my reverie. One day I needed to find a product that could logically have been shelved in one of three areas. After checking all three I decided that I would take them up on their continual offers to help me find something. I got that deer-in-the-headlights look from the clerk and I thought he would start to cry. But he did get me in touch with someone that eventually figured out that the product was in a fourth category that I would never have thought to check. So while there was enforced chiperness in the interest of improving customer experience, it was not backed up by deep knowledge of the merchandise.

Here in Sacramento there is an old line grocery store with an excellent butcher and a deli counter that beats any single shop I knew in the city. The employees are sometimes chatty and friendly, sometimes hurried and focused on their tasks and sometimes even a bit diffident. The variability of their personalities doesn't bother me a bit. I can imagine that some people are intimidated by some of the employees but I also think some people are too sensitive. I say, get over it. What I love about this store is that every time I have a question I get an answer that is almost encyclopedic about the product in question. What I lose in chipperness I get back in competency. In the end, the only thing I want is for them to pay attention to me when I need it and take care of my need in the most efficient way possible. If I want a friend I'll sign onto Facebook.

Once I recognized this I see it all over my life, especially in tech and telephone support. Too many companies give their operators scripts that they tightly enforce and very little deep training in their products. I suspect that this has something to do with the bad reputation that Indian call centers have earned. Perhaps it is the more hierarchical social structures of their history or just the rapid fire growth of the industry there, but the bone headed questions I've gotten from some operators would fill a volume of comedy. ("Hi, my name is Dale, I'm calling about order xyz.", "Yes sir. I'd be glad to help you. But first can I get your name?") What managements have done is substitute rote scripts for true management, supervision and training.

So enter Clippy. Even the name suggests some perky young thing that is eager to help. It's continual dance in the corner of the screen just screamed, "Please, please, let me help you!" But as soon as you ask it something, if you weren't lucky enough to ask it the two things it knew, you got useless information. People blamed the mode of delivery. But what was lacking was the competence. If Clippy was able to have even a fraction of the success at answering a real question about the products it was embedded into, it would not have become the brunt of jokes.

Consider what Clippy had going for it; it was an observer of what you were doing across products. It knew the context. It had access to databases of information. Now we have much better search products that could potentially make Clippy far more capable of intuiting what advice we might be seeking. It could potentially recognize repetitive behavior and offer real help in making our interaction with the product better. Will it? I suspect any employee at Microsoft who suggests anything that sounds like Clippy is immediately taken out back and shot. Too bad. RIP Clippy. I hope you come back in another life. You were much more endearing than the clerks at Safeway.