Trim will renegotiate your Comcast bill while you play Tetris

Makers of personal finance bot Trim have created a new bot to negotiate with Comcast and reduce monthly billing rates, the company told VentureBeat today.

Last year, Comcast customer service was ranked among the worst in the United States. After an interaction between a customer service agent and customer went viral in 2014, Funny or Die made a video about it.

Available for the first time today, the bot operates as a Chrome extension and responds to what the customer service agent says using natural language processing. The bot can operate on autopilot or be switched to manual so the customer can interject or turn off the bot at any time.

Because it can take a while for the bot and the human on the side to negotiate lower fees, Trim made an overlay so people can play Tetris, Brick Breaker, or Snake.

“Basically we want to see how many people we can help before Comcast shuts us down,” Trim CEO Thomas Smyth told VentureBeat in an interview.

Through reduced services or special deals, thus far 200 users have saved an average of $10, he said.

Above: Playing Tetris while Trim negotiates lower fees with Comcast

Image Credit: Trim

Being able to play games while Trim does the work for you is the company’s vision of the future of customer service.

Facebook Messenger, Twilio, and other major players in the bot industry have emphasized that bots are the future of customer service, but Trim sees part of that change being automation for customers too. More bots to interact with customer service chat service may be on the way from Trim, Smyth said.

“To be honest, I think this is absolutely the future of customer service, and we definitely don’t want to be in opposition to Comcast. We want to work with them somehow to make this easier,” Smyth said. “So far the couple hundred users that have used this bot have said this is hilarious and awesome and fun, and I think those are words you don’t usually hear after an interaction with Comcast, so I think this is a win-win, like ‘How many positive interactions can we facilitate with Comcast?'”

Since its launch earlier this year, the Trim bot on Facebook Messenger has saved its users more than $8 million by helping people interact with their personal finances with natural language, contesting overdraft fees, and automatically canceling old subscriptions.

After being featured by Facebook Messenger staff in July, Trim launched its personal finance bot.