The org now uses AI to automate all steps in parallel...
What, so it can get them wrong all at the same time?
Let me share with you a little story about an anonymous company I shall call Pottish Scower. Pottish Scower started, out of the blue, sending me text messages saying I'd not paid my final bill. Which was odd, because I'm not actually a customer of Pottish Scower.
Bemused I attempted to reply to the text message - getting an automated "This is for outgoing messages only, do not reply to this number" response. Thus thwarted, I went to their website, where it suggested that my query could be resolved by using their online chat.
This led me to a chat bot that would insist on me giving it my customer ID number before doing anything. It was incapable of grasping the concept that I didn't have one, and that's rather why I was trying to talk to someone. All attempts to get it to let me talk to a human fell into a black hole of total incomprehension.
That having failed, I tried calling them. I got put through to a lovely "AI" powered call centre, that asked me to read it my customer number. Which I didn't have. All it was capable of doing was repeat "I'm sorry, I didn't understand that. Can you please read me your customer ID number?" After pressing every button I could find I managed to talk to a human - in the sales department. Apparently this is the only department at Pottish Scower that actually employs humans. They listened to my problem and tried very hard to convince me that the best thing for me to do was switch suppliers, because they could do me a very good deal on my electricity supply.
No thank you, I insisted, I just want you to put me through to which ever number contains an actual human who can resolve this problem and stop me from getting these blasted texts every morning. The salesman then admitted that he wasn't actually able to perform transfers to another number, since all the other departments had been moved to a different call centre - but he did have a number I could ring. It was the same number I had used to get to him in the first place.
Thus thwarted for a third time, I tried emailing them.
I got an automated reply from their mail answering bot that explained very politely that I had "Forgotten" to include my customer ID number, and that I needed to write back with it included or they couldn't help me.
At this point I blocked the number on my phone so it's no longer capable of texting me. I guess someone's going to never find out about their final bill not being paid.
This is what the reality of "AI" powered customer service looks like.