VM customer support

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To those who are unhappy with VM's  customer support and hoping that it might be improved, prepare for disappointment. 

VMO2's chief executive  Lutz Schüler was quoted in yesterday's Sunday Times 

"VMO2 employs far fewer staff, 19,000, partly because it outsources functions such as construction, unlike BT Openreach, which has tens of thousands of engineers. Schüler, though, is also looking at cuts — he just will not say how many.

“Obviously less human work is needed in some areas. Let’s not talk around that. But we are not throwing numbers around,” he said. “But yes, if we manage to digitalise our business, we will also run this company with some less people...”

"... Call centre staff could be at risk, for instance."

[Cardiffman282]

As recently as May VM promised, in its weird corporate speak, "systemic transformation in Virgin Media O2 that reorganises and focuses the entire company on a customer-first, digital-first and converged mentality and mission".

So customer-first is already in the bin at the alter of digital-first (ie cost slashing).

Quelle surprise.

(Your regular public service reminder that there are still good guys out there) 

[Roger_Gooner]

It seems increasingly certain that AI chatbots will be used in many situations, one being call centres. They will be so good in knowing company policies thoroughly and being unfailingly polite and knowledgeable that a lot of jobs will be cut and some call centres closed down. So, customers will benefit but not staff.

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How do you see customers benefitting, Roger?   The present call centres are effectively chatbots already. AI chatbots will likely use the same scripts, just more efficiently and perhaps more quickly.

[Roger_Gooner]

The evidence is that AI applications, including chatbots, will be in many cases far better than humans. Some will benefit but others will lose out - including skilled workers. This is why there is so much concern about managing this technology.

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I agree with all that, but we're talking here about VM customer support, not "skilled workers".

The only significant advantage I can see from automating VM's chat bots will be the elimination of incomprehensible accents. 

[Roger_Gooner]

Not so, an AI chatbot will know in detail all of VM's procedures, prices, etc, will be available 24/7, will be in UK, won't require breaks, won't required to be paid, etc.

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They could. But do you think VM will want to share all that information on their chat bots?  Their whole ethos is to keep customers at arm's length and uninformed. 

[unisoft]

put it this way. If its worse, people will walk. Company in trouble. More competition now. 100% though VM will go down this route, they will already be in conversations and demos from potential vendors around this...AI only as good as the knowledge and rules it can use/apply. That's where it will fall down in VM. It will be expected questions with standard scenarios.