With progress comes.......

retiringtoosoon

I for one welcome our AI overlords

armistice

scobie said:

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.  

I guess AI CS will help here too, reducing call wait times.   I wonder if there will be a requirement to let you know if your talking to a real human or not. 

GingerTim

armistice said:

scobie said:

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.  

I guess AI CS will help here too, reducing call wait times.   I wonder if there will be a requirement to let you know if your talking to a real human or not. 

It would be pretty unethical if the customer wasn't told.

armistice

GingerTim said:

a requirement to let you know if your talking to a real human or not. 

It would be pretty unethical if the customer wasn't told.

Why unethical? 

[Deleted User]

GingerTim said:

armistice said:

scobie said:

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.  

I guess AI CS will help here too, reducing call wait times.   I wonder if there will be a requirement to let you know if your talking to a real human or not. 

It would be pretty unethical if the customer wasn't told.

Why? An Octopus rep is on Radio 4 now explaining that their research is showing is showing that AI-generated responses are achieving a higher customer satisfaction rate. The risk of telling people is that it will generate an adverse customer response as people inherently do not like change - good or bad.

Mstty

There must be a trigger by email to ask to converse with a real person. Not an AI bot but as these things become more realistic it will be hard to tell without using that trigger.

MattMattMattUK

Mstty said:

There must be a trigger by email to ask to converse with a real person. Not an AI bot but as these things become more realistic it will be hard to tell without using that trigger.

The first one would be an email that was unintelligible enough to need a human to try and interpret what is in it, the second would be an issue more complicated than the AI can handle. A lot of emails will be things like people asking what their tariff is, to change their Direct Debit amount or date, change contact details etc. The AI can handle those easily, leaving people do deal with the more complicated queries, or the crazies. 

[Deleted User]

I got a response within 20 minutes to an email that I sent to Octopus at 10pm on a Bank Holiday Monday. It read like any other response, and my request was actioned the following working day. I got the standard ‘ how did we do’ email as well.

Alnat1

AI doesn't forget, misremember, skim read updates etc.so if it is given correct information it will give correct answers/correctly action requests by customers and they will be happy with the outcome.

It makes sense that AI scores higher on customer satisfaction than queries actioned by CS staff.

Gerry1

Alnat1 said:

if it is given correct information it will give correct answers/correctly action requests by customers

IF.

I fear it may be more like my Garmin satnav which, despite claiming to offer free map updates for life, is often disastrously wrong.

On the obscure and seldom used M25 orbital motorway it still shows temporary 40mph limits from years ago when it was being converted to All Lane Running.

Similarly, many main roads now have lower speed limits than it displays, so you rely on it at your peril.