Signal Fusion Dissonance: Calibrating Expert Trust Across Output Channels
You're running a multimodal system that answers customer questions. Text says one thing, the voice says something slightly different, and the little chart on the side tells a third story. Nobody's screaming—yet—but your support team is quietly losing trust in all of it. This isn't a rendering bug. It's signal fusion dissonance —the measurable gap between what different output channels claim is true. Left alone, it eats credibility. Here's how to find it, fix it, and decide when to let it ride. The Quiet Crisis of Conflicting Outputs A real-world scene: the support bot that argued with itself Picture a customer asking a support bot about refund eligibility. The chat window says “approved within 3–5 business days.” The voice assistant, pulling from a different intent path, says “refunds are not available after 14 days.