No, Centrica, customers don’t prefer bots to humans | Letter

Charles MacKinnon disagrees with the British Gas owner’s justification for cutting 1,300 jobs 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