With progress comes.......

Mstty

Sadly with the introduction of systems such as Kraken sold by Octopus comes AI customer service representatives and a reduction of staff.

The news is full of CS jobs going to be axed due to AI. Not pretty reading.

Spoonie_Turtle

Not all "progress" is progress.

MattMattMattUK

Mstty said:

Sadly with the introduction of systems such as Kraken sold by Octopus comes AI customer service representatives and a reduction of staff.

The news is full of CS jobs going to be axed due to AI. Not pretty reading.

Surely that would depend on one's perspective? A good AI system should outshine most energy provider's customer service staff, unintelligible accents will be gone, background noise will be gone, and in almost all circumstances they will be reading from the same script as the humans would do anyway. 

The jobs market has always changed, the world of work evolves, one has to adapt. 

km1500

hopefully the first thing an AI chatbot in CS will be able to do is read and understand the notes from the last few times you called them about the exact same problem

molerat

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6445528/you-may-be-thinking-that-the-cs-response-was-a-little-odd-this-might-explain-why

GunJack

km1500 said:

hopefully the first thing an AI chatbot in CS will be able to do is read and understand the notes from the last few times you called them about the exact same problem

I see a new career as.... a comedian

Alnat1

Don't worry, Suella says they can all go and pick fruit or drive lorries 

armistice

Mstty said:

Sadly with the introduction of systems such as Kraken sold by Octopus comes AI customer service representatives and a reduction of staff.

The news is full of CS jobs going to be axed due to AI. Not pretty reading.

Given the poor quality of CS generally these days, this can only be a good thing.

[Deleted User]

Alnat1 said:

Don't worry, Suella says they can all go and pick fruit or drive lorries 

There is a certain irony in that comment. If, or when, intelligent and affordable fruit and vegetable picking machines become available, I doubt that anyone would regard that as anything other than progress.

scobie

I find that emails are terrible ways of dealing with CS in energy firms: too often the responses seem cookie cutter and often answer questions that are not asked. And long delays too. 

I find it much better to just pick up the phone. I’ve been with both Eon and now with Octopus this year.  Calling both is much easier and more rewarding than emails or chat apps.  

Chrysalis

These things go in circles, inevitably the AI will cause issues, and at some point it will lose them money, then they will do a reversal or partial reversal, have to wait for that cycle to follow through.

The problem with email's is they get treated as the lowest priority, which is backwards, if I ran a contact centre, I would make it a priority to answer emails within a timely manner, as that would encourage customers to contact via email, which would save money in the long term as emails are more efficient than phone calls.