Not another AI bot! Is digital migration eroding customer service?

While evolving technology and AI chatbots can be useful for streamlining certain services, when it comes to customer support, they can often make the process much more complicated and time-consuming.

These platforms often seem to enable "customer avoidance", as opposed to achieving the goal of helping people.

This can happen through replacing email addresses with online forms that often don't work properly, and automated phone systems that send customers in circles, unable to speak to another human.

Consumer journalist Wendy Knowler says often she's the last resort for those who have been unable to even contact companies due to their digital migration.

"It's actually a very significant consumer issue... if companies did a better job of making themselves accessible to their customers, I would have a much smaller inbox." 

Knowler also says sometimes the best way to deal with unhappy customers is to return to some "old-fashioned" methods...

"If you messed up and you want to make it right, pick up the phone and phone them."

To listen to consumer journalist Wendy Knowler in conversation with CapeTalk's Pippa Hudson, click below: