Don't Ruin a Good Thing with AI

Taking a human exchange and interjecting AI for no real reason

Welcome to another edition of Willoughby Hills!

This newsletter explores topics like history, culture, work, urbanism, transportation, travel, agriculture, self-sufficiency, and more.

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As of now, we don’t have plans for the coming weekend, but have been trying to come up with something fun and relaxing to do with the kids.

Longtime readers know that my wife and I bought a motorhome a few years ago, and it’s become kind of a second home for us in the summers that just happens to have a new view outside of the windows each time.

One of our favorite parts of the RV lifestyle has been belonging to Harvest Hosts, which I’ve written about before. Essentially, it’s a membership program that gets you access to a database.

For a yearly fee (that seems to grow every year, but is still the equivalent of 2-3 days in a campground), we can access an app that shows farms, wineries, breweries, museums, churches, and more across the country that are willing to let RV campers park at their business overnight in exchange for buying their products or making a small donation.

Over the years, we’ve been to an alpaca farm in New Jersey, a church retreat in Kansas, an apiary in North Carolina, an elk farm in Iowa, a classic car museum in Illinois, and an RV dealership in Upstate New York to name just a few.

Camping in an apple orchard in Pennsylvania (Heath Racela)

Unlike a campground, where parking can be tight and you don’t know if your neighbors are going to have a rowdy gathering or build a campfire feet from your rig (both things that have happened), we are often the only family at these Harvest Host sites, or at the very most, one of three or four families, although that’s rare.

As we’ve been considering a quick weekend getaway, my wife started checking Harvest Hosts to see what might be available within a short drive.

She found a lovely place on a small lake in Connecticut where the owners rent out kayaks. It sounded like a relaxing getaway- less than an hour from home, in the woods, and a chance to try something new with the kids. Their availability calendar showed they were open for this weekend, so we put in a request for a stay.

It turns out that they’re hosting a private event for the dates we requested, but that hadn’t been reflected in their calendar. Sadly, our stay request was declined.

The hosts had sent us a nice note along with the cancellation and they reassured us that they would welcome us back another time. We understood. These things happen.

I was a bit surprised and delighted by what happened next.

An email appeared in my inbox from somebody named Brenda who apparently works for Harvest Hosts corporate. She not only offered us alternative locations nearby, but also thanked us for being members and made herself available to help us with any questions. Here’s the full email:

In my memory, we’ve never had a stay request denied, so I’m not sure if outreach like this is standard operating procedure for Harvest Hosts. I’m also not convinced that this isn’t just an auto-generated form letter that’s sent out.

But there was something about this email that felt real, genuine, human. I imagined Brenda sitting in a cubicle or home office somewhere getting alerted to travelers that might need assistance, and then doing her best to come up with alternatives.

Whether or not that picture was accurate, I felt compelled to respond. Her email felt human, the human thing to do would be to reply. Since we didn’t have any immediate travel plans and didn’t require any assistance, I sent something that I thought was concise yet still expressed my gratitude:

What I wasn’t expecting, was to get a reply to that message, not from Brenda, but from HaRVey…

HaRVey (get it, RV?), is Harvest Hosts’s AI agent.

His email, like many AI communications, seemed off. It felt flattering, but in a disingenuous way. It felt like it had read my email but didn’t respond to it quite like an actual human would. It left a bad taste in my mouth.

Here’s the thing, it’s certainly possible that Brenda was also AI, or at least could have been a simple algorithm designed to respond automatically. It’s also just as likely that she was an actual human. Maybe there’s some hybrid in between, where she’s customizing a form letter.

But something about communicating with Brenda felt real. Her message wasn’t necessary, outreach because I had already received a nice cancellation note directly from the hosts. Her note was a way to show appreciation for members like me. It made what’s essentially just a database service feel a bit more human. Which is kind of the whole point of RVing anyways- connecting with other people who are willing to take on this alternative lifestyle.

Harvey was clearly not human, from the weird capitalization thing (HaRVey!) to the multiple disclosures letting me know he was AI.

While emailing with Brenda left a positive impression on me and the Harvest Hosts brand, getting an awkward message from an AI bot like Harvey left me with a very negative impression. Yes, because he was AI, but also because his very presence seemed to strip this interaction of whatever humanness had been underneath it the whole time.

Companies seem eager to deploy AI services like this, partially because executives seem to think it’s enhancing the customer experience at a low cost, but also because Wall Street seems to be overvaluing anything with AI in its name or operating plan at the moment.

I just wish these companies realized how quickly a bad AI exchange can erode positive brand equity and how off-putting receiving a response from an algorithm feels.

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Related Reading

An Unexpected Detour to Elkhart, IN

How Larry the Cable Guy Inspired Me to Travel

If you’ve missed past issues of this newsletter, they are available to read here.

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