I have an assignment for you.
- Go to The Ikea Website
- In the main menu, click “Ask Anna”.
- Talk to her. Ask her about bookshelves.* Tell her she’s creepy. Exclaim, “Oh my god.” Say, “This is weird.” Threaten to poke her with a stick.
First off, she’s creeping me out. Thank goodness they’re not pairing her with automated text-to-voice technology, because that would just be too much. The way she stares at me and blinks a lot and tips her head… I just want to hide under the desk I haven’t bought from them yet. Second, she’s awesome. Seriously. She handles non-customer-service-related questions so professionally. If you deal with the public in your profession, you should be taking notes from this robot. She’s trained to deal with the crass and curious public with flair.Third, she’s still creeping me out. *if you ask about anything on the website, she’ll open a pop-up window with a related web page for you. I had to turn off my pop-up blocker for it to work.
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