Charles MacKinnon has challenged Centrica's justification for cutting 1,300 jobs, arguing that the company's claim that customers prefer AI chatbots is misleading. In a letter to the Guardian, MacKinnon stated, 'We are being gaslit by large companies, including banks, that have gradually withdrawn face-to-face access to customer service.'
Centrica's justification questioned
According to Centrica’s boss, Chris O’Shea, 90% of British Gas customers prefer digital channels over speaking to a person in the first instance, and the number of customer calls has fallen by 20%. However, MacKinnon contends that this is hardly surprising given the difficulty of reaching a real person. 'Finding a telephone number to do so is a challenge in itself, and then there are all the layers of numbers and deflections to encourage use of the digital channels while you are kept on hold at your own cost before you can get to an employee,' he wrote.
Cost savings at customers' expense
MacKinnon argues that the shift to chatbots is not about improving service quality but about cost reduction. 'The cost saving goes to the company and the cost is exported to customers in the time and effort they have to spend having a text message “conversation” with a robot,' he said. He noted that large firms treat their own human time as precious while devaluing customer time. 'Clearly for these large firms, company human time is precious, while customer human time is not.'
Broader trend across industries
MacKinnon highlighted a broader trend among large companies, including banks, that have gradually withdrawn face-to-face customer service. 'First we saw the emergence of contact centres taking phone calls, and then digital channels of access to a human, and now it is digital access to a bot,' he wrote. He concluded that customer preference has nothing to do with these changes, as they are simply 'naked cost reduction using available technology, and removing the expense of employing people from the balance sheet.'
