According to Centrica’s boss, Chris O’Shea, most people using British Gas prefer to talk to a chatbot rather than a person (Customers prefer AI chatbots, says British Gas owner as 1,300 call centre and back office jobs axed, 23 July).
He says that 90% of his customers prefer to use digital channels than speak to a person in the first instance, and that the number of customer calls has fallen by 20%. Well, this is hardly surprising, given the difficulty of getting through to a real person. Finding a telephone number to do so is a challenge in itself, and then there are all the layers of numbers and deflections to encourage use of the digital channels while you are kept on hold at your own cost before you can get to an employee.
