These frustrating WhatsApp messages show Banbury area woman's two-day AI nightmare over water bill

Anne Turner’s ordeal began when she called Thames Water (TW) on the phone to find out why her direct debits had not been taken for three months.

She feared a repeat of 2020 when the same happened and she had to ‘catch up’ with higher monthly payments for the rest of the year.Thames Water says it was confused by two properties with the same name in the same postcode. It does not say whether this was a computer confusion or human error. There is no other house with the same name in Mrs Turner’s village.

Mrs Turner was told there was a 35-minute queue so took a WhatsApp number, believing this might be a quick way to get her problem dealt with. And that is when the AI nightmare really began.

"I could not believe how frustrating the process was,” she said. “The ‘assistants’ all called themselves by their ‘name’ and used ‘I’ in chatty form all the way through. But as I was moved from one ‘person’ to another they kept asking for information I had already given.

"I had given them everything they could possibly have needed to know in my initial message but first I got pushed to an assistant called Jyothshna, then to another called Shakar and then to one called A***, who Thames Water say is a human, but even he or she, then sent generic messages, saying they hadn’t heard from me for a while. This was in spite of a conversation that covered many screenshot pages.

"It would have been funny if it was not so frustrating and totally inept on the part of Thames Water,” she said. “I now find Jyothshna and Shakar were chat bots but I didn’t know that at the time.”

TW has promised to deal with Mrs Turner’s account problem and says it will make a payment for her inconvenience.

The story had by now moved from her billing problem to her anger at the monopoly water company’s use of inefficient AI, keeping customers waiting and failing to provide an adequate service. TW says ‘almost a third’ of its customers get their problems solved using the WhatsApp system.

Mrs Turner said: "I can’t change my water provider so I’m stuck with them. But their service is absolutely unacceptable. There is everything artificial about it and no intelligence whatsoever.

"Anyone reading my message trail would realise their WhatsApp system is faulty. Many of their customers are not of an age to spend 24-hours a day online and want the option of speaking to a human they can explain their customer query with. No wonder there was a 35-minute wait!

"I spent hours over two days being messed about with by an AI system that does not work. It should offer alternative, human contact as soon as a certain number of messages have been sent and the query has not been managed.”

A Thames Water spokesperson said: “We are very sorry to hear of Mrs Turner’s experience with us, regarding both billing issues and the service she received via WhatsApp.

“Our dedicated customer service team is working with Mrs Turner to reinstate her direct debit, which was cancelled in error. Unfortunately, there are two properties with the same name in the local area, which lead to the cancellation. We have added a note to her account to help prevent this happening again.

“As a gesture of goodwill for the inconvenience caused, we have also issued Mrs Turner with £80 credit to her account.”

Thames Water said its Chatbot, AI system ‘will always identify as Thames Water’s ‘virtual assistant’.

“Once transferred to a customer agent we will always use their real name (as it’s a human conversation). We have a diverse workforce so made the best practice design decision to use real names. A*** is a human not a Chatbot.”“We’re really sorry to hear Mrs Turner has experienced issues when contacting us via WhatsApp. The service she received does not meet the high standards we strive for,” said the spokesman.

"We have taken onboard Mrs Turner’s feedback regarding the language used on WhatsApp and her request that we make it clearer when a customer is talking to a chatbot or a customer agent.

“Our digital team are investigating the issues she experienced and working to improve the service we provide through this platform.

“We are always looking at new ways to connect with our customers and WhatsApp is one of our most recent additions. For more than a year our customers have been able to reach us using WhatsApp, and it has proved popular with around 20,000 conversations taking place each month and high levels of customer satisfaction.

“There are two options when it comes to communicating with us via WhatsApp. The first is where a customer is waiting in a phone queue, and we offer to send a link transferring them to a WhatsApp conversation. The other is if the customer is on our website, they can click a WhatsApp link to join a conversation with us.

“In both cases Conversational AI is used to identify and verify the customer, asking the same questions as if the customer was speaking to Thames Water on the phone.

“After verifying the customer, in almost a third of cases it is possible for the bot to resolve the customer’s issue, again similar to the self-serve options on the phone. In all cases, the customer can choose to bypass the bot and message with a person.

“Every day we are optimising the WhatsApp experience to ensure we are resolving customers’ issues, including reviewing transcripts to identify any parts of the conversation that can be made clearer or improved.”