At work I’m stuck with Microsoft Office XP Professional. My previous workstation was one that belonged in a museum (and now luckily is) and had no problems activating Office XP. With my new and shiny workstation (running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit), activating the software was impossible.
After some googling I found a forum with a post suggesting to contact Microsoft Support via chat. The following is my conversation with “Herbert” from Microsoft support…
Here it goes:
Please wait for an agent to respond. You are currently ‘1’ in the queue.
Privacy Statement
You are now chatting with ‘Herbert’.
Herbert: Welcome to Microsoft Customer Service, Oliver.
Oliver: Thanks. Hi.
Herbert: I understand that you are trying to activate your copy of Office XP.
Herbert: May I have the Installation ID so we can activate your Office XP over this chat session?
Oliver: Coming right up…
Oliver: It’s 1xxxxx 1xxxxx 5xxxxx …
Herbert: Thank you for that ID, please wait a moment while I check it.
Herbert: Thank you for waiting, your ID is perfect. It generated a Confirmation ID, please type this in the boxes provided and then click on Next. Please tell me if you are able to activate successfully.
Herbert: Confirmation ID: 1xxxxx-7xxxxx-….
Oliver: Perfect.
Oliver: It worked. Thank you.
Herbert: That’s great Oliver. I’m glad that we are able to resolve this issue. Have I fully answered your concern today?
Oliver: You did. Goodbye.
Herbert: By the way, Microsoft values your feedback about the quality of service that you received today. We will be sending you an email survey and I would like to request you to share your opinion. Our goal is to continuously improve and provide great customer service to you.
Herbert: Thank you for using Microsoft Customer Service Chat. Please feel free to come back again. We are available 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.
Chat session has been terminated by the agent.
I don’t know. Something about this creeped me out. Was I having a conversation with an actual human or a well written support bot? “Herbert’s” answers were just too well phrased and also came popping up just a little too fast.
Although “Herb’s” support was superb and Office XP activated, this chat left an eery hollow feeling to my stomach…
LOL, this is really weird, I can’t tell if it is a human or not 🙂 If Herbert is really a bot, I’m sure it’ll be the first AI program which is going to pass the Turing test.