노스 애틀랜틱 항공이 도입한 AI 고객 상담 시스템으로 인해 실제 고객들의 피해가 속출하고 있습니다. 고객 연락처를 숨긴 채 AI 봇에만 의존하면서, 당황한 고객들이 검색 포털에서 사기꾼에게 연락하게 되는 빈틈이 생겼습니다. 기업의 비용 절감을 위한 AI 도입이 고객 경험과 신뢰를 어떻게 훼손할 수 있는지 보여주는 핵심 사례입니다.
번역된 본문
3월 31일, 나는 노스 애틀랜틱 항공(Norse Atlantic Airways)으로부터 이메일을 한 통 받았다. 다가오는 로마 왕복 비행기 일정이었던 940달러짜리 항공권이 취소되었으며, 14일 이내에 환불을 요청할 수 있다는 내용이었다. 처음에는 당황하지 않았다. 하지만 이 회사의 환불 요청 페이지가 세 대의 기기와 두 개의 웹 브라우저에서 모두 열리지 않으면서 상황이 달라지기 시작했다. 노스 측에 여러 차례 이메일을 보냈지만 응답이 없자, 나는 전화번호를 찾아보았다. 전화번호는 아예 없었다. 레딧(Reddit)에서 나는 노스의 무계획적인 고객 서비스에 대한 수십 개의 게시물을 발견했다. 같은 날, 나는 미국 연방거래위원회(FTC)에 공공기록 정보공개 요청을 제출했다. 이런 경험이 얼마나 흔한지 파악할 수 있을 것이라 기대했다. 결국 나는 이 항공사의 티켓을 구매했거나 구매하려고 시도한 사람들의 약 75건의 상세한 불만 사례를 받았다. 많은 이들이 담당자와 연락이 닿지 않는 고객 서비스 시스템을 묘사했으며, 이렇게 비어버린 공간을 사기꾼들이 기꺼이 채우고 있었다. 금액을 명시한 41건의 불만 접수 중 21건은 1,000달러 이상의 손실을 입었다고 주장했다. 노스 애틀랜틱 항공에도 실제 인간 상담원이 있지만, 최근几年间 이 항공사는 기술 중심적인 접근 방식을 채택하여 AI 에이전트를 도입해 운영을 지원하고 있다. “기술은 우리가 더 높은 수준의 서비스 가용성과 고객 지원을 제공하는 데 도움을 줄 것이며, 동시에 더 많은 사람들이 대륙 간 여행을 즐길 수 있도록 저렴한 운임을 유지할 수 있게 해줄 것입니다.”라고 이 회사의 수석 고객 및 커뮤니케이션 책임자인 바르 노르하겐(Bård Nordhagen)은 WIRED에 전했다. 그러나 나와 수십 명의 다른 사람들이 겪은 일이 어느 정도 징후를 보여준다면, 이 버전의 고객 서비스는 시간이 많이 걸리고, 좌절감을 주며, 때로는 비용이 많이 드는 결과를 초래한다.
미래는 이미 왔다
2021년 2월에 설립된 노스 애틀랜틱 항공은 '간소화된(lean)' 인력을 보유한 '현대적인 장거리 초저가 항공사'라고 자체를 규정해 왔다. 초기에는 고객 서비스 기술 기업인 스프링클러(Sprinklr)의 도구를 도입하여 고객 문의를 통합하는 '단일화된' 받은편지함을 구축했다. (회사 웹사이트의 아카이브 기록을 볼 때, 고객 서비스 전화번호를 명시한 적이 없는 것으로 보인다.) 2025년 1월, AI 기업 킨들리(Kindly)는 자사가 노스를 위해 '오딘(Odin)' 또는 '오딘의 짝꿍(Odin's Wingman)'이라고 부르는 챗봇을 개발한 과정을 상세히 담은 블로그 게시물을 올렸다. 킨들리의 블로그 게시물에 따르면, 노스는 오딘을 '1차 지원 채널'로 만들기 위해 지원 페이지에서 고객 지원 이메일 주소를 아예 삭제해버렸다. 2026년 1월까지 노스는 이 챗봇 서비스를 '폐지(sunset)'하고 현재의 AI 에이전트인 프레이야(Freya)로 교체했다. 프레이야를 개발한 딜라이트.ai(Delight.ai)는 이 AI 도입 후 '인간의 개입 없이 해결되는 문의 비율'이 2주 만에 60%에서 80%로 증가했다고 밝혔다. “우리는 고객 지원 팀의 미래를 AI 에이전트 관리자로 보고 있습니다.”라고 노스의 최고 제품 책임자인 알프 림(Alf Lim)은 딜라이트.ai 블로그 게시물에서 말했다. 그는 프레이야가 노스의 '핵심 팀원'이라고 덧붙였다. 해당 블로그에 따르면, 프레이야를 통해 노스는 고객 지원 부서를 이러한 AI 에이전트 관리자 역할로 '역량을 고도화(upskill)'할 수 있다. 이들은 '지속적으로 최적화하고, 학습시키며, 인간의 손길이 필요할 때 개입하는 전문가'로 설명된다. 노르하겐은 WIRED에 프레이야가 성공을 거두었으며 현재 '승객 문의의 99%'를 처리하고 있다고 말했다.
사기꾼들의 천국
FTC에 접수된 많은 불만 사례는 공통된 주제를 공유했다. 항공편을 변경하거나 예약을 조정해야 하는 사람들이 온라인에서 노스 애틀랜틱 항공의 전화번호를 검색했다는 것이다. FTC 불만 사례 중 18건은 고객이 구글에서 노스의 고객 서비스 정보를 검색한 후 검색 결과에 나온 사기 웹사이트와 전화번호에 연락해 사기를 당했다고 명시적으로 주장했다. 일부 고객은 이미 결제한 것으로 알고 있던 항공편에 대해 추가로 돈을 내야 한다고 말을 듣았다고 주장했다. 또 다른 경우에는 일정을 변경하기 위해 터무니없이 비싼 수수료를 지불해야 한다고 말해 카드 정보와 경우에 따라 사회보장번호까지 넘겼다고 진술했다.
Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story On March 31, I received an email from Norse Atlantic Airways. The $940 flights for my upcoming round trip to Rome had been canceled, it said, and I had 14 days to request a refund. At first, I didn’t panic. That began to change when the company’s refund request page wouldn’t load on two browsers across three devices. After Norse didn’t respond to several emails, I looked for a phone number. There wasn’t one. On Reddit, I found dozens of posts about Norse’s allegedly haphazard customer service. The same day, I filed a public records request with the Federal Trade Commission, which I hoped would give me a better idea of how common this experience was. I eventually received around 75 detailed complaints from people who had bought or tried to buy tickets from the airline. Many described a customer service operation in which the inability to get in touch with a human created a vacuum that scammers appeared happy to step into. Of the 41 complaints that reported a dollar figure, 21 claimed they lost more than $1,000. Norse Atlantic Airways does have human customer service workers, but in recent years, the airline has leaned into a tech-forward approach, deploying AI agents to help power its operation. “Technology will help us have a higher level of availability and customer support, while still maintaining low fares for more people to enjoy travel between continents,” Bård Nordhagen, the company’s chief customer and communications officer, tells WIRED. Yet if what I and dozens of other people experienced is any indication, this version of customer service is time-consuming, frustrating, and at times expensive. The Future Is Now Norse Atlantic Airways, which was formed in February 2021 , has described itself as a “modern, long-haul, low-cost airline” with a “ lean ” workforce. Early on, it implemented a tool from the customer service technology company Sprinklr that created a “unified” inbox of customer service queries. (Based on archives of the company’s website, it doesn’t appear to have ever listed a customer service number.) In January 2025, the AI company Kindly wrote a blog post detailing how it developed a chatbot for Norse alternatingly called “ Odin ” or “ Odin’s Wingman .” Norse also removed the customer support email from its support page in order to make Odin the “primary support channel,” according to the Kindly blog post. By January 2026, Norse had “ sunset ” the chatbot and replaced it with its current AI agent, Freya. Delight.ai, the company that developed Freya, said that the airline’s no-human-intervention inquiry resolution rate “rose from 60 percent to 80 percent” within two weeks of its introduction. “We see the future of our customer support team as AI agent managers,” Norse’s chief product officer, Alf Lim, said in a Delight.ai blog post. Lim added that Freya is a “core part of the team” at Norse. According to the blog, Freya would allow Norse to “upskill” its customer support unit into these AI agent managers, which are described as “specialists who continuously optimize, train and step in when human-touch is required.” Nordhagen tells WIRED that Freya has been a success and now manages “99 percent of inquiries from passengers.” A Scammer’s Paradise Many of the FTC complaints shared a common theme: A person, needing to change their flight or adjust their booking, searched online for the Norse Atlantic Airways phone number. Eighteen of the FTC complaints explicitly claimed that the person was scammed after they Googled Norse’s customer service information and found scam websites and phone numbers in the results. In some cases, customers claimed they were told they owed money for a flight they thought they already paid for. Other times, they said they were told that they had to pay an exorbitant fee in order to make a change to their itinerary. They passed along their credit card information, and in some cases, their social security numbers. Soon after, they said, huge charges appeared on their credit card statements. In one complaint filed in March 2025, a person described trying to buy tickets over the phone. They said they disclosed information for “3 different credit cards” because the man on the other end of the line claimed that their payments weren’t going through. “Stupidly gave him my date of birth and last 4 of my [social security number],” the person wrote. By the time they realized they had been scammed and canceled their credit cards, there was an unidentifiable charge for $1,258.88. “We are 72 and 79 years old [we] are scared,” the customer said. “Please help.” This problem has apparently become so widespread that Norse’s official website includes a giant warning about “online scam and fraud.” At the time of writing, a Google search for the “Norse Atlantic airways phone number” returned links to three Yelp pages, which listed two different phone numbers. Both of these appear to be scams. When WIRED called the first number, a man claimed to be a representative of Star Alliance, a network of 26 airlines. However, Star Alliance’s website doesn’t list Norse Atlantic Airways among its affiliated airlines, and it doesn’t include the phone number. (A representative for Star Alliance confirmed that the number isn't associated with the company, and said Norse isn't one of its members.) When WIRED called the second number, a different man said he was a representative of “Flight Travel Portal,” a service that does not appear to exist. When WIRED asked the man about online posts that claimed his phone number was a scam, he sounded unfazed. People online can say anything, he offered. A few complaints noted that the person had emailed customer service at their credit card company or a travel website they used to book a flight, only to be referred back to Norse or told there was nothing the company could do. In August 2024, a person in New York wrote that they purchased a $397 flight from Paris to New York using Priceline, including cancellation insurance through the company Xcover, and installed payments through Affirm. When they realized they couldn’t make the flight, they contacted Priceline, which directed them to Norse. After looking for Norse’s phone number on Google, they wound up giving their credit card information to scammers, prompting them to lock their card. (Xcover and Priceline didn't respond to requests for comment. A representative for Affirm said the company doesn't comment on individual customers, and noted that returns are subject to each merchant's policies.) “The flight is scheduled for tomorrow, and despite reaching out to Norse Airways three days ago via email, I have received no response,” the person said. They had been in touch with Priceline, Xcover, and Affirm, but none of them were able to help. “I am concerned that without any intervention, it may appear that I missed the flight, making it even harder to obtain a refund.” Even people who weren’t scammed said they wound up losing money. One customer from Los Angeles said that they were "denied boarding" on their Norse flight from Rome to Los Angeles. "At the airport in Italy, no Norse Atlantic staff were present, only contracted employees without contact information for the airline,” the complaint read. “The only other communication channel available was Norse’s chatbot; the airline has no live customer service or phone line.” As a result, they said, they were forced to “secure urgent, costly alternative arrangements to avoid being stranded abroad with a child.” A Human Touch On an earnings call in 2024, Norse’s then CEO Bjørn Tore Larsen said that the company is always “chasing ways where we can become more efficient, and that includes quite heavy investment in technology,” adding that doing so “gives a very quick payback, both in terms of reducing cost and in terms of revenues.” In early May, Norse announced that it was cutting its administrative s