Stop relying on AI chatbots for customer care and guarantee the “right to talk to a human”, Citizens Advice has urged service providers, as research found they wasted time, caused stress and delayed problem solving for more than half of users.
For example, the charity found that submitting energy meter readings to correct a wrong bill can take less than an hour online if systems are working properly.
Only 20% of UK adults polled on behalf of Citizens Advice in July said chatbots were their preferred way to communicate, with phone calls, email and instant messaging all preferred.
The UK government has before said it is investing £11.9m in a digital inclusion innovation fund, supporting local projects to help people get online.
4 sentences from our version of the report,
chosen to cover it. Nothing here is written; every line is in the article below.
How
Summarized version
Only 20% of UK adults polled on behalf of Citizens Advice in July said chatbots were their preferred way to communicate, with phone calls, email and instant messaging all preferred.
The report’s most important sentence, shortened and in plain words. How
Headline check
There is nothing in this headline a machine can check against the report: no figure, no name and no quotation.
Citizens Advice says providers of services such as energy, banking, phone and internet should guarantee the ‘right to talk to a human’.
Stop relying on AI chatbots for customer care and guarantee the “right to talk to a human”, Citizens Advice has urged service providers, as research found they wasted time, caused stress and delayed problem solving for more than half of users.
The charity concluded that chatbots caused harm, saying too often they trapped humans in an “endless loop” in which nothing got resolved, and almost half of people who had to use a chatbot found them unhelpful, with some concluding the chatbot seemed rigged to “make me give up”.
For example, the charity found that submitting energy meter readings to correct a wrong bill can take less than an hour online if systems are working properly. In some places applying for low-cost social tariff broadband is being made harder by being digital only, Citizens Advice found after it took evidence from its frontline advisers and hundreds of case summaries.
Only 20% of UK adults polled on behalf of Citizens Advice in July said chatbots were their preferred way to communicate, with phone calls, email and instant messaging all preferred.
Of the people who found it difficult or not possible to talk to a human to resolve an issue with their services, 49% felt stress or frustration, 27% felt powerless, 44% experienced delays to resolution and 14% gave up trying to resolve the issue altogether.
The UK government has before said it is investing £11.9m in a digital inclusion innovation fund, supporting local projects to help people get online.
Shortened to 1 minute
of reading, this version reads 6.2 on the Niral Score.
You are reading our version, not theirs.
This is The Guardian Australia (Technology)'s report shortened to its most important sentences, in plainer words, with
verdicts and loaded words taken out. Plain description stays, and so do adjectives
that carry a fact, such as "former" or "federal". The reporting, the facts and the quotations
are theirs — quotations are never edited — and the indicators beside it measure
this version. Hover or tap Adjectives to see every one left in the text.
How this outlet filed it, and how we rewrote it
No other newsroom we read has filed on this event, so there is nothing to compare it with yet.
Readers can ask a question about this story here.
Questions and answers are for subscribers.
Sign in
to read them.
Comments are read before they appear where anything in them needs a person to look.
Nothing posted here is ever deleted; a comment taken down keeps its text and the reason,
so the decision can be looked at again. How this works
